prism
by aikotters
Summary: They all made the choice to live and god left them to it. Or, the chosen children survive the end, and must make amends from the beginning if they intend to survive it a second time. An alternate ending to tri.
1. Prologue

_Warnings: death, sacrifice, blood, past violence, depression._

* * *

Prologue - White

When the world ends, it is with whimpers and laughter.

The thing who was once a man is laughing, screaming his joy to the god he had prayed to, to the only one to answer his pleas for broken restitution, but all the same, the victory is hollow. There is no telling what happens next. Only that his suffering is over, and soon he will be in pieces and places.

"Oh Homeostasis! Where is your power now?"

Neither Homeostasis nor its conduit speak for it, and its miko is deaf to the world even now. All she would hear is the sobbing of a child, crying for its mother to stop anyway, and Yagami Hikari had thrown away that kindness and put it in a box for her brother to reopen.

"Where are you now, you false _god_?"

_Dying, _whispers the world left behind to fall apart and rot. _Dying dying dying._

And even if the little goddess is fine with dying, she is not fine with the universe fading away from her failures.

The creator of the new world opens its mouth and screams again, screams its pain and its hunger to the heavens. It flaps its wings and everything seems to halt. Even the wind, the rebelling light, draws to a halt. In the silence, the sobs are loud and clear.

"You poor thing," whispers the young god. "You don't have to do this, you know."

The creator cries out its disbelief, its rage, its accusations.

The young god wipes her eyes. "I know," she agrees. "I know. But wouldn't you do the same for them?"

From below, on the ruined buildings, the copycat once a man stops laughing. His expression curdles. "No," he screams. "No, that's… you're not supposed to be here! No one is supposed to know you! You are supposed to die! Be forgotten, witch! Be abandoned!"

"Rest assured," whispers Homeostasis, voice hoarse from cries and desperate clamoring on walls again. "I most likely will be. But this is not Yggdrasil's victory, nor yours Akiyama Ryo. This victory belongs to the children, if they so let it be. Not even you and I are free of this. This is a new world."

The once a man looks at the young goddess and the blue eyes burn and burn and _burn_. "You would never let me have a happy ending."

"Yggdrasil wouldn't," she counters, watching the remaining living grow closer together. "Happy endings are something you have to create yourself." Courage with Miracles and Kindness under an arm each, like they weigh little more than air. Faith and Honesty are pulled by shaking arms. Light is left apart, but she supposes that's normal. Until they tug her in, pale hands and torn up faces. Envy curdles, curls, but the young goddess lets it pass. As she must. They deserve this last moment as-

There. Yes, they grab her, they hold her. They hold Salvation to each other because salvation is what is needed, what is freely offered, if only they ask.

"_Look at me," _thunders the once a man. "Look at me."

She does without fear. "Here I am," she says. "Your last chance at revenge." She spreads her arms. "Come on. Kill me with your own hands. Like you tried with Salvation." His face turns mulish and she smiles at him. "Oh you can't. That makes this easier."

She doesn't turn away from him, for that would be stupid even now, and he might as well see the end and the beginning. She's not enough of a monster for him to be otherwise, even if at times she must be. "Come, Ordinemon," she calls, smiling at nothing and no one. "Create the new world. The time has come."

Oh but she wishes. She makes one last wish that a miracle will come. A miracle will happen here and this time, the gods will know better.

She doesn't hold breaths she can't take, of course, but she's going to believe in miracles anyway. Even if Himekawa Maki hadn't.

The savior cries out and opens her wings. And feathers fall like rain melding with murk and whimpering and snuffing out the light.

But the light is only dead for a moment, as before her eyes, small sparks, barely enough to make a fire, ignite all in the murky wetness of death and decay.

Homeostasis smiles and lets herself fall. Yggdrasil screams at her in voices she knew once, voices she loved once. But eventually, Yggdrasil too will be consumed. For that is the way the circle turns.

* * *

The world for the chosen ones ends rather quickly. They aren't shouting at each other, not forcing their partners to evolve. To be frank, they don't give up and they don't want to. But they have each other and for a single moment, that's all they want, all they need.

And that moment is enough. The murk grabs them and threatens to tug them apart, to rip and rend and disassemble them like it's August of 1999 once more.

But once again, this isn't the case. Once again, the Chosen remember.

One Crest for everyone, and everyone's Crest for one. They are all Chosen, and in the imminent moment of death and dying, that is enough for them. That is enough for them to gather their strength.

It doesn't stop the end, it doesn't stop the rewinding, it doesn't stop anything but it grounds them in each other's clasped hands, in the knowledge that they're not letting go again, they're not leaving again. No matter where or what they're taken to.

And yet nothing is happening. The murk is all encompassing, the air is roaring and yet… the world is ending without them.

Taichi holds Hikari tighter, feels her move. Feels her lift her hand, one of the only free ones available, up and up. And it occurs to him, for a moment, that she had always had something, something buried deep that held all of them in her hands.

"No," he hears against his chest. Her voice, not broken, not soulless on the floor. "No." She repeats the word. "You can't have them. If this is our bad ending, let it be with us. Help us." She turns her head and despite himself, he closes his eyes in expectation of all of her accusations, all of her anger. Taichi knows it's cowardly, but it's his sister, who has always seen through him to her own chagrin. It's more difficult than most anybody else.

"Me?" And it's Meiko again, always Meiko, who took the lion's share of their burden. "I can't. I-"

"We can," Hikari says, and she is still resolute, though so tired, as if seeing him alone carries her on. "We're always weak on our own. We're always useless on our own, but… if there's something we all want, we'll get." And now she looks at him, accusing, unforgiving, but understanding. "We all can't go off and try to solve things by ourselves. We'll help you."

Taichi makes a smile form on his face, thinks of Daigo bloodied and shredded, thinks of friends left in pods to die. "Yeah. We'll help you, Meiko."

"You didn't before."

And perhaps that stings more than she means but it has all of Mimi's honesty, more of her than they want, especially since she nods anyway, only adding fuel to the fire and enjoying every second. "You're right. But we're still here, so we still can."

"Rely on us," Jou says and he makes it sound so simple.

"We're with you," Yamato agrees, and he looks at the younger kids, the ones who look like death warmed over. "All of you."

Daisuke makes a face, and it twists a little with doubt and anger and a lot of ugly uncomfortable things. But he doesn't seem to disagree. "All of us," he rasps back because they all know the chips are down and the roulette's about to roll.

"If two of us could do this," Taichi says and he understands now, he agrees now, he feels what Hikari is really trying to say without saying it. "What can all of us do?" And he grins at Meiko, feeling more than he had in weeks. "What can we all do?"

Meiko looks at them all, one by one, through her glasses. "But she needs to die. She's in so much pain."

"... Maybe," Takeru agrees. He clenches his fists and unclenches them. "Maybe she does, but… it shouldn't be forever. We can't let it be for good. You're partners. You need each other. You need her."

Taichi watches Meiko's eyes water with tears. If he could, he'd let go and help her wipe them off. After all, that's something that to them really is obvious. It's not enough that their partners need them, now they need their partners. They've had them too long, they've experienced so much of each other. The world, maybe the world wasn't ready for that. But they just might be and if it is too late for this world, it may not be too late for the one they make.

"You can still help her Meiko," he says and he finds that he means it. Growing up does mean sacrifices, does mean accepting pain and loss and sorrow as a part of life. But that doesn't have to be all there is. There can't be. And they haven't lost yet. "She can still come home."

Sensei would want them to save her and just killing her isn't saving her. It's only making her bear their burdens.

He watches her swallow and, with Mimi propping her up with her knees, lets go. She pulls out her digivice from the pocket of her skirt and brings it up to her mouth.

The screen crackles to life and Meiko's voice cracks before she can start. Then Sora squeezes her shoulder and she starts.

"Mei-chan," she says. "Mei-chan. I love you. I love you. I know you don't love yourself. I don't love myself either. We're partners for a reason. We've always been. We've.. I don't. I don't want to let you go. Every time I do, you just end up-"

Taichi turns away the best he can and looks down to see Agumon, no longer a Koromon, staring up at him.

"Taichi," he says, plaintive. "I missed you."

Taichi wants to laugh. His partner seems so simple, and maybe he is (Taichi knows himself well enough to know he can be too) but he's not dumb. He gets it. Agumon tends to get it before he does.

Hikari, still beside him, lets go of him and puts her digivice in her palm. "Hey, Tailmon," she says and Taichi watches her smile. "There was someone you knew once. He was named Wizarmon. While you wandered the digital world under a master's orders, you stopped and gave him water to drink. To you, it wasn't much. It probably didn't mean anything. But to him, it was a kindness he'd thought people had left behind. And he was desperate to return it, to heal the heart you'd told him was broken. And… he failed. He couldn't save you the way he wanted to. But he's kept trying. For years and years, to repay that debt of saving his life. I wish you could remember it. He showed me to you again, remember. He brought us together again… and I think, if you wish really hard, you all can come back to us now."

"It's enough," Taichi hears, in Meiko's cracking voice. "Th-Thanks, thanks much Mei-chan but it's okay. You can stop. You can let go… please, please let go-"

"Hey Tailmon," Hikari says after a few moments of quiet, of listening to Meiko beg and beg with her hoarse voice over the roar of the sky. "I think you're wrong. All of the light _isn't _in Meicoomon. I think we must have some of it. That's why we're here. That's why she's still here, despite everything."

Meiko grows quiet, but not in despair, not in tears. Her fingers grip tight on Taichi's once more. "No," she says, slowly, as if she's thinking about it for the first time. "No, it's not. Maybe this is a hopeless world, where growing old means giving up. But… I think we should still live in it anyway. We should still save it anyway. It's still our world. This is where we were born. This is where we met. I won't let you take away the place that has all our memories. I…" She raises her head and lifts the blackened Digivice up, following Hikari's still outstretched hand. "We won't let you run away from this!"

In another story, perhaps, a hero would appear, cloaked in white, wreathed in holy grace, and mercy would come.

Instead, a soft light wraps around them all, in fuschia, then the solid pink of Hikari's crest. And it spreads like water puddles filling up with rain. Hikari doesn't glow, not really, but something eases out of her shoulders and she smiles up at someone they can't see.

"I forgive you," she says. "Maybe no one else will, maybe no one else can, but I will. You were trying to do what we all thought would help. Maybe you'll learn next time, with us."

She pauses, eyes growing wide. "What do you mean? No, you can't mean that, you _can't_."

They pause. Meiko lowers her hand. "Hikari-chan?" croaks Miyako.

Her face is paling. "You can't. Nothing will be fixed if this happens. Nothing!"

"What's going on?"

All they can think of is Homeostasis and her rainbow eyes. But wouldn't something happening to them be good? Wouldn't justice against them be right?

"No!" Hikari repeats. "We said no sacrifices! That includes yo- of course that would be!"

She turns to them, eyes wide and desperate and furious, opening the world itself to explain-

But it's too late, for everything is awash in white.

* * *

**_A/N:_ **Happy Odaiba Day!

This is the solution to me... being out of Digimon on and off? So here is what happens, when I look at tri, look at the fic I'm cowriting, get tired, and decide I need about ninety times more backstory than I can apply in the main story. Well, that said, hope you enjoy! Please leave a review below!


	2. Chapter 1

_Warnings: orphans, death, awkward convos._

* * *

_Chapter One - Orange - 1973_

When Taichi opens his eyes, for a moment, he figures he is only back a few hours ago, when they'd appeared with the Digimon and promptly terrified the entire population.

It's the same sensation, with people gawking at sixteen teenagers in various states of health and disarray, uniforms with better, stronger fabric than they should have, and also Mimi's dyed hair, let alone Miyako and Jou's and Ken's... colored hair. If he vaguely remembers right from what little he'd paid attention to in biology, isn't well-documented as a thing until the 1980's, right before he was born. Mimi likely looks like a delinquent. That narrows things down absolutely not at all.

What she looks like however, is irrelevant to the rest of the situation which is thus:

One, they're alive.

Two, the younger kids might not be if they don't book it to a hospital with decent doctors that aren't Jou and his lack of university credentials.

Three, the digimon are still here, and they're twitching like they don't know what to do with themselves and with watery, worn out eyes. He'll unpack that later, he has to.

Four, Hikari and Meiko look absolutely devastated about something or other and that is sending off all his alarm bells. He doesn't need more disasters today.

Five, what darn year is it?

Six, oh right. He's still alive and sensei isn't, and sensei has a higher likelihood of knowing what to do right now. And Taichi's hands feel tacky and gross and as if they've been dirty forever and don't know how not to be.

He can solve… two parts of the situation. He turns to the nearest bystander and says, in a voice he will years later call his "I sound like I know what I'm doing" tone. "Excuse me? Can you point me to the closest hospital? My friends here got into a fight with some foreigners and I need to get them checked."

Understanding dawns on the person's face and they smile, disarmed by the sparkle in his eyes and the way Hikari is leaning on him. Within seconds, someone's at a payphone, calling an ambulance, and for a moment, it would be like being in 2005, except for the serious lack of televisions and amount of people lacking cell phones.

Taichi turns to his friend and hopes he looks confident. "Jou, Takeru, follow with them."

Both nod to him, Takeru shooting him a look of betrayal. Tough. He has to look after Hikari. He needs an explanation, she needs an apology.

And Daisuke and the others _do _need answers, even if they won't like them at all.

Daisuke looks at him with nothing less than betrayal itself. And Taichi meets him squarely in the eye. His hands are tacky, his chest is hurting, Sensei's voice is ringing in his ears.

He is in no state to provide that explanation.

"Yamato, can you?" he adds.

Yamato raises an eyebrow at him, as if ready to disagree just because of the hell of it. But he nods and joins them. They need one more.

He hesitates, because this is the first time in a while he's wanted Sora at his side for no other reason than to tell him he's crazy and they love him anyway. But, he can't offer that. "Sora… please."

Sora smiles at him, and her eyes are also wet. Dang it. And how does he say-

He could have not come back but he's here. He's here and the adults in their life are not (yet) and everything is confusing and-

He wants to break, he wants to break so badly. He can't help himself because he can't do ityet.

He waits for them to go, feels Hikari's shoulder gently nudge at his arm. She's wiped her eyes already, found her feet so fast he wonders if she actually lost them at all. Koushiro's on his other side. His fingers tap on his laptop case on and off and for a moment, Taichi can almost hear his brain whirring.

"Mimi," he says, when he finds his voice. "Go with Meiko. Find us a hotel. You've got credit cards, right?"

"From last year," she says and there's a hint of reproach there. But she seems to understand. As always she just seems to know things. "I'll see if it still works, okay?" She smiles. "Count on us!"

"Always do," he says, and from his side, Hikari snorts. Not at the cheesiness no, but the adrenaline is wearing off and he knows it's not true. He knows that before it was easy and there was no choice _but to _rely on everyone like in soccer. But this isn't soccer, this is real life and he has no idea what's going on.

If only everyone else could give them his answers. It would save him trouble.

"Hikari," he says, and it sounds heavier than he means and he can't help it. "What… what happened?"

Hikari shifts. They walk together, settle against a tree. People are already turning away, not paying attention because the novelty of it is gone, the kids have scattered, it could have just been a hallucination. Already the excuses were forming in their minds. This would be forgotten soon enough.

She looks up at the trees, at the sunlight shifting through them without a care. "She died," she finally says, looking back down. "Homeostasis, I mean. To bring us our Digimon at full strength, to save Meicoomon, to make sure we ended up like this and not-" She stops and Taichi pauses, thinks, feels revulsion well up in his gut because they could have easily been rebooted to be born again, if at all, to do this all over again. "Not be us," she finally finishes. "But it must have been too much energy, or something because we're further back and we're…"

Koushiro frowns. "But how could it die?" His voice is thoughtful. "Homeostasis is considered a security program without a body, hence why it possesses you. It can't die."

"She wasn't." Hikari doesn't stress the pronoun, she doesn't have to, really. "I don't think she was ever really alive. But I think she'd had something once, something that could act and think and feel. But I think it was taken away, leaving her-" She shakes her head. "Relying on us."

"Daigo-sensei too," Taichi adds, turning down to his shoes. "That Himekawa-san too… they were…"

No one even knew what had happened to her after the first reboot. Let alone the second. "Sensei said she had manipulated the whole thing. For some reason."

"That doesn't make any sense," Koushiro says, shaking his head. "Not that she wouldn't have a reason, Ichijouji-kun had reasons of his own, but that she could complete it on her own." Hikari raises an eyebrow and he shakes his head. "No, not what I mean. No matter how much time, experience, and knowledge I accumulate about the Digital World, the decline of the balance took years normally. For them and for us."

"She did have years to do something, years to think and plan and work," Taichi says because even though he doesn't want to believe a Chosen would willingly destroy everything they worked for for reasons he didn't know, he wants to believe his teacher who had given up his life -uselessly now, the blood is uselessly everywhere- and carry on that they know.

Hikari swallows, but Koushiro shakes his head. "Not to that extent Taichi-san. I'm merely saying that it couldn't have just been her. At best, she was a puppet. A human here. Like that Gennai-san. Like Meicoomon."

And now Taichi understands, understands in a way that cloves and garlic go well in olive oil sometimes.

"It could happen again," he says. "We didn't stop Yggdrasil, or find the source of what really infected Meicoomon aside from some theories. It could happen again."

Koushiro nods and looks at the laptop he may not be able to use ever again. "It could happen again," he repeats. "If we don't start preparing now."

Tentomon buzzes at his side. "Koushiro-han…"

"We'll find the state of technology in this world," Koushiro says. "And we'll see what we can do."

Taichi nods. His heart rate is slowing. He feels the way he did when the pod reached earth soil. His soul is resolute.

Unbeknownst to him, a familiar pointed star burns on his chest.

* * *

Showa 48 is a strange time. It's not particularly exciting, it's just before things had started to move, technology wise. It isn't able to replicate the things that the chosen had grown up around. People were still moving, computers were nothing like Koushiro's rigged anything. Yet.

Yet the more things change, the more things stay the same.

For instance-

"Our parents aren't listed."

There's always a wrinkle.

Koushiro clutches the sides of his keyboard. The outlets here are the same, so he can still charge it and risk breaking the stream of time every time he turns it on. But they can't worry about that yet. "Mostly. Anywhere. They don't exist. They…" He stops, chews his lip, a habit he's picked up. "We exist, but they don't. Orphans, all of us. From-" He stops, shakes his head, chews on words.

Mimi pales and Sora has to catch her. Her eyes are already watering.

Taichi watches, keeps his panic to digging grooves into his legs. Keeps the concern, the wonder, the

"From what?" Takeru sounds steady, like he had twelve seconds. "Not the bombs?"

Koushiro shakes his head. "I'm still looking into it. However, based on our placement at our current ages, we are too young for that to be the case. There was an… event, called The Rising of the Cradle, but until I find some old newspapers, the likelihood of me being able to find anything that concrete that isn't rumor will be low until I can hack into facilities."

"Until, he says," Mimi manages to say, shoulders shaking with laughter and sorrow.

Taichi makes himself smile. And it hurts. But he is the leader. He has to unite them. He brushes Agumon's snout with his fingers. He gets that familiar, puzzled look. "What about the digital world?" He asks. "The Digimon are still here, so it exists right?"

"_Yes_." His voice almost chokes but he nods. Relief bubbles in his eyes. "It's there. It's not the world we know, but it's definitely there, still growing. It's very young."

"We need to go back," Taichi says before he can stop himself. Then he stops, thinks deep. "But we also need to adjust to this world as soon as we can. We need as many answers as possible. We have to feed ourselves and the digimon. Then we'll see if we can make a way to and from the Digital World."

He pauses, and looks at them all. "I don't want to see the Digital World with nothing again. Rejecting us. It… it's all we have now. So, say, if we can do something to prevent what happened in our time from happening now, I want to do what I can. That said, I don't want to choose for you. Back then, I was this close to doing that and well, most of us saw what happened."

Yamato makes a noise between a cough and a snort, and for a moment, everyone shares a bland kind of smile.

"The Digital World is ours, as much as it belongs to the digimon," he continues. "And Homeostasis probably brought us back here for a reason. From what Hikari said, it may not exist anymore. We'll… We'll probably never know what that reason is. So we'll have to make up our own, and I dunno about you but this sucks. And I don't want to be the reason it stays that way." His shoulders suddenly sag and he leans back in his seat. "But… that's just me. If you will help me, I'll be grateful, and even if you don't, I'm going to help you anyway." He looks Daisuke in the eyes, and the burgundy glare meets his, struck by his firm settlement and acceptance, that that was for his team as much as it was anyone else, but particularly for them.

Daisuke's glare seems to dim into an echo, fade into something Taichi has seen in himself a little too muchuntl now.

Koushiro breaks the silence left in the wake of his long dribble of commentary. "It's a bit too late to tell me to stop, since i'm still hacking over here."

Miyako guffaws, and while it sounds somewhat tinged with pain, she means every single bit of it. And almost like a cue, Mimi bursts into hysterical laughter that falls into tears. No one speaks. No one has to.

* * *

Their address is the same. No one lives in the Yagami apartment that shouldn't. The others had called around. Their addresses had been the same, even Meiko's. Just empty, a minor bit of dust, no air conditioning in a few, a few ethernet posts and less outlets… Some outdated things. Some top of the line for their time.

The first thing Taichi notices as he walks in, his sister trailing after him with Tailmon and Agumon in their arms, is the calendar. It reads the year, it reads the month. And the fridge is covered in childish doodles on printer paper.

"Good to see your art skills never improved," Hikari comments, looking at one with one of her worn smiles that says pride.

"Says you, photo girl." He watches her shut the door, watches the Digimon scamper about. Or well, Agumon scamper about towards the fridge and Tailmon climb onto the sofa and curl up there. "Do you think we should have brought Meiko here?"

"She needed some time alone," Hikari says, not firmly but not with disinterest either. "We all do."

He nods. He looks at his fingers, his painfully human fingers. For a moment, he reaches into himself and begs for fire. Begs for rage and pain and mourning to come out alive and-

The smoke alarm goes off and his sister throws a cup of water on his hands.

"Onii-chan," she chides and he laughs. Then she throws her arms around him, squeezes him tight. He pauses and feels the singular heave that she gives only him when things really hurt. When she's tired of holding everything in.

Taichi, with practiced ease of having a sister who doubled as an octopus, wiggles free enough to hug her back. "Sorry," he says, and it feels filmy in his mouth. It's not enough, not enough to encapsulate the blood that had covered his teacher's body, the four friends and one mentor locked in tubes. The silence, the digitization, the not-Gennai's laughter and twisting face that did not belong.

He squeezes her and puts his head on her head, cheek first, like they had the first few days without a bed. They'd slept on the couch, then, curled up in Hikari's quilt and with him listening to her babble about Koromon. Trying to remember, desperately holding onto things like gossamer, that had never even happened. And yet they had. The barriers had fallen before. They'd fall apart again.

"Onii-chan," she says, after her heaving has stopped and their legs are starting to cramp. "I'm going with the digimon when we find a way through."

So many things well up in his throat at once, so many things he wants to say and do and hurt about but instead, he holds her tight and says, "Okay."

He should fight, he should disagree. He should get in her face. But he knows this voice, this steady steel and knowing and understanding. It has happened so many times before. The death of their lives, their world, their everything, is really on her shoulders a little no matter how much they ended up being puppets in the end, and unlike a lot of people he knows, she is refusing to look away from it. She's refusing to be anyone's puppet now. And that is more than most people expect from the mysterious waifish girl who knew everything and said nothing.

But Taichi can't force these words out of his throat. Instead, through a sob of his own, he says, "I'll miss you."

And he feels her smile against his neck, very sad and very strong. "You won't let me go without a way back."

And that, he knows is also right. He will fight tooth and nail for her to have a way home.

She would and tried, to do the same for him.

"You should invite Meiko-san here after all," she says as they unwind from the Yagami patented twizzler hug (were twizzlers invented yet? He hopes soon). "I think you'll be good friends."

He flicks her on the forehead and his chest aches with the echo of his mother's laughter, the sizzle of the pan with eggs, and his father's shoes clattering to the ground.

All sounds they'll never make again.

"I'll think about it," he says and she laughs again, and for a moment Taichi almost forgets. Not for very long, of course, but a little at a time.

They have no choice but to take this one step at a time.

* * *

**_A/N:_ **Bit of a delay on this one, I'm sorry about that. This and the next chapter won't cover as much time as the following ones. I hope you'll bear with me. But there is a lot to unpack that is not mine to tell. So I really look forward to your commentary. Thanks everyone!


	3. Chapter 2

_Warnings: past violence, trauma, abandonment._

* * *

_Chapter Two - Indigo - 1973-74_

Of course, as expected, most everyone else does not take this well.

"No," Takeru says and for a moment Yamato can't help but imagine angry eleven year old Takeru when no one believed him about a missing Hikari. He remembers the extras of that seething fury, even knowing she was safe and home and fine now. "You can't. You'd be alone."

And while it's not the wrong thing to say, Yamato knows it isn't the right one either. He sees Hikari straighten up in a way that sends Daisuke still limping for cover, because while these two agree on many things, her being flesh and not glass is something they'll throw things at each other over mostly out of sight. He would know, he's seen it.

"I'll have the Digimon," she says, as patiently as she can, while looking him in the eye. There would be some gasping mothers if they had any (and it's entirely different, he can't help but think, to having lost his mother's time in the divorce, now he doesn't have her at all, it's so _different_.) "I'll be all right this time."

"We thought the others would be all right," Takeru says and even Yamato has to wince at the honesty there. He sees all the younger kids wince themselves. Iori in particular looks like he's been stabbed, or maybe he had been, Yamato has yet to look under the poor kid's bandages unlike Jou who is determined to do these nurses' jobs and then some. "We thought they would be all right without us and they weren't. We could have gotten to them, and now… we might not be able to get to you."

"Not right away, we won't," Koushiro agrees and for a moment, Yamato considers going and giving the genius a cuff on the head. But he can't, really. He can't, because he knows that's just how Koushiro is. Knowledge needs to be spread and clearly. Yamato feels Koushiro tries to express information as quickly and succinctly and understandably as possible because without it you can't be knowledgeable. Of everyone, Koushiro understands the power of his crest, and its weight. "And it's going to be difficult to get her through as it is. The barriers are still fresh. The Wall of Fire hasn't been breached yet."

"Not helping, Koushiro." Yamato watches Takeru turn bright red, his pale skin looking sunburned.

Koushiro swallows. "My apologies. I'm merely explaining what we have to do to be able to help further." He pauses, chews his lip. "And I don't think we will succeed at changing her mind anyway."

"You won't," Hikari-chan agrees cheerfully.

Daisuke's peeking over the couch now, over Taichi's couch, though Yamato hopes the kid hasn't noticed just how close he is to his mentor and friend. He doesn't know what's running through the junior chosen leader's head, but he hasn't asked yet, and now isn't the time.

"Hikari-chan," the kid says anyway, watching with some dim light in his eyes. "You're really fine with going. Never seeing with us again. After everything."

There is something accusatory there, laced with what Yamato knows his brother can label as vocal aconite, but Hikari only smiles it off and replies,

"Yes, Daisuke-kun."

Yamato watches his face fall, watches Miyako throw herself on her friend, and then watches his brother twitch and seethe and storm out, Patamon landing on his shoulder.

Yamato pauses a moment, nods to everyone, then walks out after him.

If Daisuke thinks he's being subtle in how he follows, well, Yamato isn't going to correct him.

* * *

"I'm not a baby who needs minding, Nii-san."

It's a testament to how unhappy his brother is that Takeru is talking at all, though that's only because he knows whatever shit he gives, Yamato can and will eventually sling back with interest and cheese in a can. "You're my brother who needs minding so he doesn't run off to find five girls to date at once to cover his massive insecurity issues."

"Oh _thanks._" Yamato waits for the telltale lip twitch, a habit of their mother's, just to be sure he hasn't gone too far, before sitting down. "She didn't even ask us if it was okay."

"I mean, Hikari-chan is like her brother in three ways." Yamato thinks he sounds reasonable here, but as Sora has told him he is incredibly lacking in the reasoning and logic department (like she can talk) he can't confirm. "One of them includes how dense she is in assuming we'll worry about her. The other is that she'll make a decision before the rest of us even think about the problem."

Daisuke flops down with them with not a lick of decorum or boundary space which means he's probably not as angry as he seems, only really confused and thankfully lacking a Cherrymon in his head. "What's the third one?" he asks, since Takeru is too busy scowling at the lower steps.

Yamato thinks about it, then bites the bullet and responds with "Being cute as hell."

Takeru chokes on spit, Daisuke lets out a peal of laughter that definitely hurts more going out than it does breathing in. Gabumon only stares at him, purely puzzled.

Yamato tries to grin it off, but his ears are pink so he's definitely failing at it.

But the two of them look a little happier now, so he takes his ribbing and his lumps like the adult he is going to be.

The thought makes him stop and for a few minutes, Yamato just sits and turns the image in his head. His hair turning up into spikes again, softer and less gel, a sloped weight to his cheeks, a sharpness to his fingers, tuned from years and years of music, touching a hand that isn't just smaller than his, but under his protection. Under his weight. Under his love in a way Takeru can't be.

For some reason, his face burns hotter, and he almost misses Daisuke's voice, impossibly quiet beneath his hands.

"Why didn't you guys find us?"

He sounds, grim, resigned, hurting raw. Also… guilty, somehow. Like he hasn't wanted to ask but there's an opportunity so he hits it with both fists.

Takeru gapes, swallows, shame filling his blue eyes like tears he's going to try and rub away again. And then, perhaps because the two of them have always liked using anger to hide when they're scared more than smiling ever worked, Takeru replies,

"Why didn't you let us come with you?"

Daisuke flinches, Of all people, Motomiya Daisuke flinches. And Yamato waits, because he knows that wasn't Takeru's way of defending himself now. That was Takeru's way of asking where they'd been supposed to _start_. What were they supposed to do? How could they help?

"It was just one patrol," Daisuke says, but it's weak, and he sounds tired. Like even he's stopped believing whatever they decided the answer was. "And...well, we figured even with the Holy Ring back, it'd be all right, we could handle it. We've been able to so far. And we knew you were busy and Hikari-chan wasn't answering her phone. We didn't see any point in waiting."

"Idiot." Yamato says the word, layers it with a fondness he doesn't have to for Taichi and Sora, who take his ribbing in stride. "It's worth waiting for your friends. And I think Hikari-chan knows that's what's going to happen." He smiles a little, and it's hard, carrying the guilt of not finding the others sooner, not helping them, not knowing. But it's not what Daisuke or his brother need, so he'll let Sora get on him over it later. "She knows we'll find a way to see each other again, and that we won't stop caring no matter how far life takes us."

"But why does it have to be her?"

Yamato doesn't even blink. "Because the rest of us _don't want to."_

* * *

Takeru has come to accept that his brother can actually cook. Watching his brother pretend to gag over the tiniest amount of wasabi got old fairly quickly, and no one could blame him for bopping his little brother on the nose, right?

Sora finds it adorable, but then she would because she gets the patented "Are you dating my brother while I'm _here" _teasing that covered up his dreadful insecurity because no one knew what to do with the half-French boy who could only pretend to flirt.

Yamato, like always, worries about Takeru. But it's easier now, in a sickening kind of way, to not say it. His brother doesn't need him to say it, and thus he doesn't have to.

Sora looks at him from her now near-permanent presence on his couch, in that narrowed-eyed way you get from moms and dads who have to be your moms. If his stomach lurches he ignores it.

"What are you thinking?" she asks him.

He makes a face. "Just about how nice it is to not have an ashtray in here."

She smiles at him in disbelief and he's glad she ends it there and goes back to her sewing. Piyomon sleeps beside her, as if she's afraid to go.

Yamato makes another effort to not bump into Gabumon's tail, only to look down and realize his friend is right beside him, holding the pan from the bread.

Yamato smiles and ignores that it's a little wet. "Don't burn yourself idiot."

Gabumon only smiles in his knowing way and waves a paw clad in an oven mitt.

Yamato watches him set the tray down, and is suddenly overcome with that rawness from being eleven years old, where they'd just sat and let him play harmonica, and again, months and another timeline ago, where he'd done it without asking.

"I learned a new song on the harmonica yesterday," he begins. "From some kids outside. Want to help me practice?"

Gabumon beams at him, and yes, they're definitely crying.

And that's he hears Sora and Piyomon sniffling from their lofty perch.

"I know why Takeru and Daisuke are angry," he finally says once they're all settled and the weirdest tv show is playing and they have warm bread and butter. "But we can't go. Convincing humans will be much harder than convincing Digimon. And Hikari-chan's always had that… tie to the Digital World that we don't have."

Yamato nods, glad he hadn't had to bring it up.

"Also she and Taichi are hiding something."

Sora says this as casually as opening a bottle of water. And she's Taichi's old friend so he believes her.

"Like what?" Because now his hair is prickling on his neck, and it makes him a little sweaty to think about. Taichi is, after all, awful at keeping secrets unless he doesn't understand them.

"Would Taichi really let any of us go to the Digital World alone with no way back? He came _back _for us." Sora wipes her mouth from where she'd bitten her lip. "He wouldn't leave any of us stranded. He _definitely_ wouldn't leave Hikari-chan stranded. And we don't know how he came back to Earth with the pods."

Yamato considers this. "Do you think he knows a way to get back? And hasn't told Koushiro? Of all people."

Sora hesitates, but she nods. "Yes, I think so."

Before Yamato can even start to consider this, Takeru throws the front door open, walking with Iori and sounding happier than he has in days.

"Legos," he tells them with a grin. "We're gonna start early. Make them popular."

Iori's cheeks are flushed, he hands twitchy, and Upamon on top of the bag stretches his ear wings.

Yamato fixes them both with his most approving stare. "Sounds great to me. Let's show the digimon how it works."

And if Iori lights up like an actual preteen, and Takeru looks a little bit proud, well, it's worth keeping those dark thoughts in the back of their minds a little bit longer.

* * *

When Koushiro calls up to tell them that they're ready to go whenever, it's the afternoon after he's been accused of truancy. Apparently, there are issues with him in school and if it weren't for his grades, he'd have been expelled.

The school gets an angry mob of twelve children and one carefully disguised giant ladybug, headed by Taichi and Mimi the second they hear it, who probably make the teachers wet themselves through sheer force of personality. Yamato keeps order and if someone tries to escape, gets the younger kids to form a barrier or stands in their face himself, and dares them to run with his eyes alone.

Koushiro is their friend, their partner, their comrade as much as anyone, and no supposed problems are allowed to keep him from being everything he should.

Koushiro leaves the school flushed with euphoria and warm feelings and all of them pile Koushiro into a hug of pride that he returns with everything he has.

They spend the night, all of them, running through the playground, picking at grass, shoving homework around, making sandwiches and rice balls, preparing even if they don't want to admit it. Yamato watches Taichi hug Hikari and spin her about like they're little kids again and she laughs into his shoulder.

Somehow, Mimi gets a hold of a guitar and demands Yamato sing his heart out.

He does and Mimi joins him and for a moment, one blissful track, he can think he could spend the rest of his life with Mimi too, flushed with life and the pleasure of the present day.

But Sora takes his hand and squeezes it around the blisters from the strings, and he knows just why he isn't going to.

And that, he realizes as he looks at Mimi flopping ungainly between Meiko and Miyako and earning them both laughing like loons, is just fine.

They are just fine.

But he isn't sure until he sees Hikari-chan, nestled between his brother and Daisuke like friends should be, all caught together and playing with her camera.

Wait.

"Put that camera away or _so help me-"_

Takeru snatches the camera from Hikari's hands and flees his grip and Yamato sees Hikari-chan and Daisuke lean on each other, laughing so hard they cry.

And he smiles a little, only for it to widen as Taichi trips Takeru and pins him to the ground, knowing exactly where and how to get him sputtering laughter.

Which Yamato has to stop of course. No one's allowed to lay a hand on his little brother without his permission. Especially not Taichi? Right? Right.

* * *

A small hand shakes Yamato awake. He half-expects to see Sora, outlined in the rising sun and beautifully shaded in oranges, it making her hair crackle in place like a forest fire.

It's not. It's Hikari-chan, and she looks at him solemn and old.

"Wh' time is it?"

"Early," she says, a sheepish smile crossing her face. "They want to send me through first with Tailmon. Just in case."

He sits up, suspicion crossing his face. Yamato nods slowly. In case. Right.

"You're not allowed to die," he tells her. "Takeru would never forgive you."

She laughs behind her hand. "Onii-chan says that about you and Sora-san all the time."

He wants to laugh back, but the situation lingers. He glances at Daisuke and Takeru, tangled in each other in a way that will find them sniping at each other because Daisuke is firmly Ken and Miyako sexual and Takeru is bless him, in the closet with the ugly American Christmas sweaters. "Want to dump ice water on those two?"

She beams and Yamato feels relief in his toes that she's now never going to marry Takeru.

Soon the twenty-five of them are passing around coffee, donuts, tea and for the Digimon, whole submarine sandwiches. There are reasons for this, Koushiro promises.

Takeru is shooting him dirty looks across the circle as he drips water into his coffee and Yamato bats his eyelashes as if to say, "who, me?" in the most genuine expression possible. Sora snorts, barely awake on his shoulder.

Mimi gently clocks Koushiro's cheek with a bottle of oolong tea, forcing him to take one hand from his computer in order to drink it. No one is around yet, which is what Yamato chalks up to the fact that he didn't wake up in a jail cell or with cuffs on his hands. How no one found them sleeping in a park and did anything is just weird.

Or maybe it's just the day. It's a winter morning in 1974 and the world is still turning. And now they have to join in.

"Hikari-san," Koushiro finally says, soft and solemn. "Will you and Tailmon stand in the middle?"

The low chatter goes silent. Hikari nods, rises to her feet with Tailmon and a small backpack in hand. She'd talked them all out of too much, pointing out she'd be on the move most of the time and that she'd have her D-Terminal for them to figure out sending items through anyway. She smiles at them, but focuses mainly on Koushiro.

Yamato gently picks up Gabumon and his partner comes willingly, squeezing around him with a steady pair of arms.

"The program is all warmed up," Koushiro says softly, black eyes steady on them all. "We're ready at any time."

"I'm not," Daisuke grumbles. Takeru agrees with a scowl.

Hikari smiles underneath her eyelashes. "Next time you see me, Daisuke-kun, I'll be _buff_ and flex all over you."

His eyes go wide with horror. "_No."_

Miyako snorts. "Sounds hot."

"Miyako!"

Iori chokes on his donut as Poromon scolds her in his high chirpy voice, likely for the last time.

Hikari only laughs and glances at her brother. He's smiling, but sadly, and that worm of suspicion wiggles in Yamato's gut again.

It's gone as Koushiro types and calibrates or whatever he's doing, and beside Mimi, Meiko goes stiff as a board. Then a tingle runs down his spine, sending his hair standing on end. He balks and clutches Gabumon tighter. Hikari merely looks up and it draws their eyes upward.

It's like a tear on a piece of paper that was glued on a piece of cardboard, ripping off to see the color underneath. The sky rips open a slit, and the leaves on the trees begin to tug themselves up into it, followed by rocks, stray litter, and donuts left unattended. Chibimon squawks his dismay at the loss.

Hikari regards them all, lets Tailmon tighten her grip on her jacket, and then beams. "I'm off."

"Be careful out there," he says before Takeru can do something stupid.

"Punch someone for me," Taichi adds.

She nods to them, grin widening as Mimi twitches to scoop her into a hug and settles for nearly breaking Meiko's ribs instead.

Then, she lifts her D-3 up towards the burning, bright light and then, all trace of her and Tailmon is gone.

For a few moments, they just stare, silently where they left. All but Koushiro, who is typing furiously again. If this works, the Digimon are next. If it doesn't, the Digimon stay, and plans change.

Minutes tick past. No one gets up to pace, lest they get caught in the light themselves and they all really get screwed over. The digimon are vibrating. Gabumon leans on him.

"You sure you want to go?" Yamato asks him.

Gabumon shakes his head. "Not really, but I should. I don't want Yamato to be hurt because of us again."

"I'd take a thousand rocks and photobombs for you," Yamato assures him, only to get the big red stare burning into his.

"What about a thousand and one?"

It takes Yamato a minute to realize he's joking. "Nah you gotta get hit with that last one." Yamato rubs his knuckles into the Digimon's head with a scoff and a fond smile. "Maybe you'll get back in time to meet my kids and partner with them."

Gabumon regards him with that utter serenity that comes from just being Gabumon. "I'm always only going to be your partner, Yamato."

And that hurts, but it settles an ancient ache in his chest. Yamato squeezes him tighter. "Yeah, I know."

There's a beep from all of their pockets. They all fumble out their D-Terminals.

"Koushiro-san is a jerk," reads on their screen. "He dropped me on a Monochromon."

Takeru snorts. "Good."

They laugh.

Another beep. "I'm fine now, no thanks to Takeru-kun. I'm sending you new coordinates."

"She always knows," Yamato hears his brother grumble and he laughs.

"She'd better."

Koushiro's hand tightens on Tentomon's shell, and for a moment, he seems to hesitate. Then he nods. "We're set. Is everyone ready?"

_No._ "Yeah," Taichi says, just to be contrary. "Let's do it.

And for once, Yamato agrees without arguing about it. "Yeah. Let's do it."

The digimon nod to their partners, and as one, to Meiko. The girl flushes with some hidden joy.

Yamato swallows the lump in his throat, and lets Gabumon go. It hurts more this time than the last.

But that's okay. Sometimes things hurt. Sometimes things change. That doesn't make them worth having. Maybe this time, _this world_, they'll be able to prove it.

No. They're definitely going to.

* * *

"You know," he says to Sora and Takeru as they walk home that day. "I think I'm gonna go into space."

"Really."

He waits, feels their disbelief on his spine. Then he laughs. "Heck no, I'm going to do lightspeed travel,_ then_ go into space."

"You and Taichi have to work on that competition thing," Sora tells him. But she's smiling and he suspects Takeru is too.

Good to know some things don't have to change.

* * *

**_A/N:_** This is a story that comes out of me with great joy and great sorrow. To me, this is a story of growing up and living. Not only that things change and we will not always win without sacrifices, but that if you wish for it, you will find the love you need and wish for despite everything else. Put another way, it's another story I wanted to tell in My Sanctuary, but I was too young and inexperienced to do. I hope this story will cause you to feel something by the end, if it hasn't already. That's my fervent wish.

And admittedly, I'm getting a little sentimental early on. I can't help it. This story carries a lot of things I want to tell people in the end.

On the more important things, poly Chosen? Poly Chosen. They all love each other in their own ways. After all, Sora's love is everyone's love and Yamato's friendship is everyone's too.

On that note, next chapter is Sora. Look forward to her. And don't worry, this isn't the last we'll see of Hikari.


	4. Chapter 3

_Warnings: Underage drinking. They are suitably punished. With humiliation. Also flirting and innuendo. _

* * *

Chapter Three - Red - 1976

Sora spends a lot of her time in the sewing room with Meiko for the first couple of years when not at home. It's better than being in that empty apartment, as she's supposed to be, or with Yamato and Takeru as she prefers to be.

Within that year, most of them had started gravitating to stay in each other's homes. Cheaper, less distance, less quiet. Meiko-chan, Miyako-chan and Mimi-chan, Takeru-kun and Iori-kun, Taichi and Daisuke-kun (though that was dangerous for a lot of reasons), Jyou-senpai and Koushiro-kun, eventually Ichijouji-kun would stop dragging his heels and come out wouldn't last forever, and they all know it, but the lack of Hikari-chan and the digimon… something had to fill the gap somehow.

"I heard Jyou-senpai got a girlfriend," she says as her hands move the cloth. "He says it's the same girl from before but I don't believe him."

"Mimi-san says she's actually seen them together this time so at least now we're sure she's real." Meiko doesn't fidget so much anymore. Her stutter is less present surrounded by the sheer amount of unshakeable trust and faith that comes from high doses of chosen child and therefore lots of language practice, but then in response her accent comes out full force.

But then Taichi has also called it cute and turned red for a solid minute so that might be the other reason they're hearing it more. Sora can't judge.

"Has she judged them thoroughly yet?" Sora picks up the patch and looks at it with disbelief. She could have sworn… ah well.

"Miyako-chan did," Meiko replies, gently scratching at her latest, carefully made design. She lifts the sketchbook for Sora's examination. Sora squints, looks at where the lines of fabric meet creases and where stretching would be. Then she gives a thumbs up.

Meiko nods seriously and reaches for her colored pencils, catching one as it rolls on the desk. She sets to work again with intense vigor. Even though they're at most a year apart, Sora can't help but smile at her junior's enthusiasm. Or well, interest at minimum.

Sora pretends that the little orange cats she draws in the corners of her work everyday have always been there, and that seems to make her friend happy, so there.

"I'm thinking of going into teaching."

Sora stops and turns off the sewing machine. The windows outside fill with voices yelling and people screaming about goals and hits and Sora thinks of the tennis equipment at her bed. "Teaching all together?" she asks, carefully folding her hands over the still itchy skirt.

Meiko swallows, almost an audible noise. Then she nods and takes off her glasses. Sora lets her, watches her fiddle with them as an excuse to fake clean them and not look. "Language," she says softly, slowly. "Accents, disabilities, differences, braille, that kind of thing…" She swallows. "It's… when I moved here, it was horrible. Uncomfortable. I was, am always having to control myself to look like everyone else."

Sora lifts up her hand and touches Meiko's shoulder. She gets a smile soft as silk, and just as easy to slice open.

Meiko finds it in her to continue. "And I was lucky enough I could fake it but… I'm tired of faking it and if _I'm_ tired what about everyone else who has to pretend they can pretend at all?"

Sora thinks of Koushiro-kun, who creeps around them more nowadays than he had in 2005, or Mimi-chan, who'd flown back to America after a phone call from someone who said her parents' home was going to get sold off if she wasn't fast enough, or even Iori-kun, who'd been caught holding hands with a girl under a tree and laughing shyly when she nervously cheered him on in kendo.

Or even Daisuke-kun, who understands _doing_ more than saying and that's why Miyako-chan's punted him off to Taichi's couch twice this month.

Sora reaches over, takes both of Meiko's hands in hers. "I think you'll be wonderful," she says, and means every bit of it.

Meiko smiles, dips her head and thanks her.

Soon, they get back to work, and the scene looks and feels ordinary once more.

"I wish I could have saved them," Meiko says after a while. "They were hurting, just like we're hurting, and I couldn't just… help them."

"None of us could," Sora says, not questioning the who, because it's just too vast to word. "Not then. But now." She stops and tests the words, tests her breathing. "We may have a chance. And I think whatever it is you want to do, you'll manage to do it. Even if you make mistakes, you're the best of us at showing that it is perfectly all right, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time."

Meiko's hands still. Then she says in a bit of a choke. "Thank you, Sora-san. I-I'm going to try."

Sora doesn't quite know what to say to that. But then, as she hands her friend a tissue, she really doesn't have to.

* * *

Graduation dawns quietly. There's no madcap rush to decide their careers or panicked noises about college. Everything had been decided when the Digimon left. And there's no one to meet them but each other.

Jyou waves between scribbles and paperwork. Mimi flops on Sora, grumbling about how she still has another year.

"Speak for yourself," Miyako says with a huff. "I have two."

"Iori-kun has like, five, don't torture him," Takeru shoots back as he sticks a price tag to Yamato's clothes.

Iori shrugs, as if it doesn't mean anything. "I can use the vacation."

Daisuke cackles.

Sora smiles at them all, and gently shoves Mimi to her side instead of her spine. The complaint she gets is in such garbled English she can ignore it.

"Did you finish securing that building Koushiro?" Taichi asks between sips of a soda he'd promised himself as a gift.

"Almost." Koushiro's indispensable laptop is still replaced with a notebook and pens which he despises but is definitely understandable. They don't want the thing stolen. "That transfer student is quite smart. He's going into automation soon, or something like it. He says he wants to study robotics and replication of the human body. Like stem cell research."

"I'm surprised no one laughed him out of the room," Yamato says wearily from his head on the table. Studying was never fun, but an ants in your pants Taichi really takes the fun out of it. These past few months were an exercise in not dying of exhaustion or murdering your best friend, according to Yamato. Not in that phrasing of course, but Sora reads between the lines. And the two of them wouldn't be as close if they didn't want to consider that.

"They certainly tried their hardest," Koushiro says wearily. "The problem is that he is literally years ahead of his time. I looked at his theories… they're quite accurate from what I remember."

They stop for a moment. Then Taichi slurps his soup and says, "Have we ever been sure that we were the only ones to come back?"

They all look at each other. Miyako-chan's head thuds dramatically onto the table. "Can we talk about this later? We're supposed to be _happy _today."

"No," Iori-kun deadpans. "It's what you deserve, Miyako-san."

Ken snickers and pretends to hide it in his napkin. Daisuke doesn't hide it and falls backwards in his chair laughing so hard.

No one continues the conversation. Sora glances at Yamato, then Taichi, and then wishes they had.

* * *

Yamato's hiding something from her.

She is too busy studying and getting used to computers (old computers at that, Koushiro-kun - Koushiro just Koushiro now they are adults- has to be chafing at the poor technology) to really guess at what it is. If she is wondering, it's mostly in how even Taichi isn't telling her. And getting away with hiding it.

"He'll get it to you when he's ready," is the closest she gets to a hint from him. "Don't worry about it."

She wants to shake him. "How can you blurt out you forgot your own birthday but not this?"

Taichi grins. "Some things mean more than arbitrary dates of birth on a calendar." He pauses in his writing. "I can't wait for when in thirty plus years when I never have to use English cursive again."

"You're the one entering international business and wanting a head start, not the rest of us," she reminds him, fixing a patch in her skirt.

"Says the small business owner in Japan."

"Bite me," she says with the strongest amount of affection she can muster. She had considered at first, opening the flower arrangement school her mother had tugged and goaded and demanded of her in childhood that she resented, and maybe someday that would come, but right now, Sora simply can't see it. "Trade schools are still valuable. And I'm not giving you a discount until your hair is normal sized."

And the building needs to go to use. She'll have plenty to keep her occupied in it.

Taichi scoffs at the concept of normal hair, literally. "But who else will I commission suits to contour to the exact specifications and curves of my ass?"

"Meiko-chan, probably," Sora says without missing a beat.

He snorts. "Oh no, oh no, she's more interested in-"

"You corrupt my ears _any further, _Yagami Taichi, and this pencil is going into your nose."

"Your hairclip is still up there I'll have you know."

Horrified at the potential of that, Sora throws a seat cushion at him.

Yamato comes home, half a Takeru under one arm and the other half dragging on the pavement and sees them using the twin sofas as boundary lines, tangled up in a familiar wrestling match of childhood past.

Utterly unconcerned, the blond just shuts the door. "Well shit if you'd told me we were sharing Taichi tonight I'd have called Mochizuki and booted this idiot back to Miyako's house."

"She just wasn't patient enough to include you for me," Taichi replies from underneath her armpit. She's still not sure how his head got there. "What's wrong with emo junior over there."

"Shut up…" Takeru mutters. "I know I'm in trouble…"

"Kiddo you're seventeen, the only trouble you're in is the trouble you make for yourself," Yamato replies, flopping his brother's limp, misery exuding body onto the free couch. Taichi and Sora untangle themselves in the wake of teenage angst. Having experienced it through all walks of life, they are pretty sure they're mostly experts in the field.

"That's such a change," Taichi comments, slinging an arm over Yamato's neck. "You've grown up, bud."

He gets a punch in the shoulder that's definitely deserved.

"I drank _beer_," Takeru hiccups over their familiar bickering, looking truly sorry for himself at this point.

Yamato makes a noise that was supposed to be a laugh and ends up a cough.

"Screw off," Takeru whines. "I'm all weepy. In front of my _girlfriend_. I'm never getting that back."

"If she loves you she'll accept seeing you at your worst," Sora assures him. "She might even like it."

"As long as it's not your violent worst," Taichi says with a fond little smile. "And even then you might be good."

Takeru moans with pity, truly sniffling and feeling sorry for himself. "I'm screwed."

"You are not," Sora insists, while Taichi and Yamato look at each other in disbelief. "You're struggling, that's all. That's fine. That's-" She stops, searches for the closest thing she can get to remembering this kind of misery, the kind that you know you'll get out of eventually but right now it just really freaking sucks. She smiles at him. "I miss my mother," she finally says.

And of course because she picks this to say in front of three boys who didn't quite get a whole lot of "how to handle girl tears" except Taichi, who waits like always for her to actually cry. "I know that's normal and it's okay and it's good because that means I still love her and she loved me and that my parents loved me but that doesn't change the fact that they're _gone_ because we weren't ready to do the hard parts and the easy parts of life at the same time." She swallows and is she actually going to cry while she's trying to be the adult, gosh that's gross.

Taichi scoots closer to her and kneels to rest his nose right in front of Takeru's face, which is also gross. "What she's saying is you're gonna get through this and it's going to suck and it's not going to feel like it, but you can do it."

"And what if I can't?" he asks and for a moment, all Sora can think of is the scared eight-year-old who promised her that he'd take care of Hikari-chan and that he was brave now and thinking of that hurts in a way it never did before. "I couldn't take care of Hikari-chan, what makes you think I can do this?"

Yamato flicks him gently on the forehead. "I have your hopes, Takeru."

Takeru sniffles a moment, and then says. "Cheesy."

Taichi grins at him. "We're the chosen children. Let the cheese pour."

"Speaking of."

Sora turns to Yamato, who has finally taken off his jacket and his bags and is pulling something from his pockets.

Oh. Oh _shit. _How did she not figure it out, how the hell didn't she think of this, oh no oh gosh oh-

"Takenouchi Sora," he says with a cracking voice because his cheeks are burning and his eyes are water and they're all a complete mess. "I'd like to marry you. Will you let me?"

She wants to cry, scream, laugh, hug him. She takes the box from his shaking hands and forgets all decorum to throw her arms around him and kiss him hard.

For a moment, they have the apartment to themselves. Then Takeru croaks. "Is she the mother-in-law now?"

Taichi laughs himself out of their apartment. Takeru isn't _nearly_ that lucky.

Mimi, over expensive phone calls and D-Terminal, is already screaming an hour later.

Even Hikari-chan, dimensions and miles and time zones away, sends them her love. And pictures of their digimon puffed up with pride.

They're too young, surely, in college, even worse, working on their careers anyway, even _worse_. But in reality, marriage doesn't mean everyone matters any less. It doesn't mean they don't love anyone else or everyone else. Because they do, and having futures with all of them would be worth experiencing. But they choose each other because that's the happy future they envision.

And ultimately, for Sora, that makes missing her mom a little bit easier.

She thinks her mother would be fine with it anyway.

She hopes her father can forgive her for not letting her be there.


	5. Chapter 4

_Tags: Mentions of drinking, trans male character, non human character, f-bomb, knowledge is power._

* * *

**_Chapter Four - Green - 1977-1978_**

On New Year's Eve of 1977, Izumi Koushiro interrupts Mimi's party.

He's there of course, almost everyone is there. But they're enjoying themselves, a few people are tipsy, food's getting eaten, and so on. So it seems like a good party, even though it's cheaper food she slow-cooked and ovened and everything, they love it all the more. And Daisuke-kun had helped. So it makes her feel better. He feels better too.

Though he'll always have that limp, she supposes.

But she's still not surprised (concerned, but not surprised) to find Koushiro curled up on her bed with his fingers pressing tight against his abdomen and a look of disgust twisting his features.

"Cramps?" she asks sympathetically. She's tipsy at worst, of everyone Takeru is their lightweight and they love him too much to repeat the drunken stupidity of 1976 on him, but she still has her brain in skull functioning well. He nods, chewing his lip and staring at the lamp.

"I always keep the painkillers in the side table here," Mimi continues and goes to get him some. He takes the pills gratefully, without water but still remains curled, staring off into space and even at the snowflakes. Normally, he'd be on his computer by now, distracting himself with theorems and strategies and things he would talk about with Taichi, but considering Taichi is out there sitting with Daisuke and miming throwing things at people standing in Times Square, it's safe to guess Taichi, unknowingly, is the problem.

"Thank you very much," he says to her after a few minutes, uncurling a little with some relief.

"You're welcome." Years ago, she'd have whined at his single minded focus and intensity, but it was just who he was. And if it keeps him grounded all the better.

So she sits and waits. She doesn't have the crest of patience, no one does, but Mimi knows now when to wait and when to blurt out her feelings. It's hard, because watching people dance around them is annoying and often not what's best but… boundaries are important too after all.

"I…"

And it does get rewarded eventually, if you wait.

"I want to confess to Taichi-san. I want to tell him the truth."

And that's why she sticks by this young man with a crush the size of a small country. She keeps his secrets because someone should. "You have told them the truth," she points out, sitting by his feet. "You're the boy Izumi Koushiro. That's all that will matter to them."

He makes a face at her and she doesn't laugh, but she wants to by gosh. "I know that, Mimi-san."

"But you don't _know_ that, Koushiro-kun," she says. He nods. She shrugs. "Taichi-san is better than that, you know that too. I won't tell you to go out there, get so drunk that you forget your own name, and scream it out for all of New York to hear." He turns red up to his ears at the thought. "But you should talk to Taichi-san _and_ Meiko-chan."

He freezes as he opens his mouth. "I didn't even get that far," he admits.

Mimi's smile widens. "That's why you keep me around," she declares, "I think further than you."

Koushiro cracks a laugh. Then he sits up slowly, gingerly. "I need some oolong tea," he says. "Not spiked."

"That's the spirit."

She returns with it and he guzzles it down with gusto. Then he says, "Hikari-san hasn't messaged me in over a year."

Mimi nods. They'd rather expected that. The digital world is hardly a safe place on a good day. Peaceful sure, but not safe.

"The last thing she sent me was 'Tell my brother to abandon that thought in his head'." He furrows his brow. "When I did I…" Koushiro sighs. "It all looked rather heavy, I suppose."

Mimi sits beside him. "Everything looks heavier when you love someone and can't help them." She thinks of those first few months of dating, of a crush spiking up her ears and the anger he had put into frantic, heartfelt drawings.

"Does it?" Koushiro asks, chasing down the last dregs of tea. "Or is he hurting and it's my fault?"

Mimi leans her friend against her side. "Both, except it's not your fault. You just did the right thing."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because I would have lied to him."

Koushiro smiles sadly. "Perhaps that would have been better."

"Not in the end," she tells him, watching the timer on the nearest billboard. "Not when it counts."

* * *

It's a month later that she ends up meeting Taichi at a cafe for lunch. He pays before she can scold him, and says it's so he won't have to worry Wallace. Mimi still scolds him, despite the sober look on his face.

"You really cut your hair," she says once he's reduced to a miserable wobbling heap of guilt in his chair.

"Drunk man says what a sober man feels," he says, pulling his good cheer back out of his coffee. "It'll be hard to be taken seriously at the UN with hair the size of their egos."

She snorts and takes an elegant bite of pastry. "Thank you for that, Taichi-san. I'll say that to Wallace when he gets home. He needs a laugh."

"How can he when you're around to make it possible?"

Mimi laughs again. "Don't flirt. You may have everyone else wrapped around your fingers but not me. I _invented _charm."

"Only one of us is a princess here," Taichi replies with sparkling eyes and good humor. "And I can't rock a tutu."

"I think only your sister can rock a tutu now, Taichi-san," Mimi teases and watches his face- oh yes there _it is_, that little twitch. She was getting good at this. Before she'd have ignored those little face changes because that was subtlety and why be subtle when you can be yourself? Simple. Some people were just subtle. It was in their blood.

His lips twitched and he downed the rest of his coffee. "Ready to get to the point I guess."

"I usually am." Her shoulders shake a little but she squares them. "Running away didn't exactly work back then. Pretending there wasn't a point didn't either. If it's you, I know you've got a good point in there somewhere. And you're not trying to be an ass about it."

And honestly, she was glad he'd come to her and not the other way around, like Sora and Yamato had been implying should be done. Because they are suspicious, of course. After Daigo had died they'd always been… suspicious. It would be cute about anyone else. With Taichi it was… unhelpful. They trust him, right?

"Two things," he says, and his voice is mercifully low and they're in a private booth but there's no such thing as great soundproofing. So she sets a little radio out of her behemoth of a purse and slaps a cd on before leaning forward. He grins. "Two things. The first you'll like. The second you probably won't."

"Go on," Mimi says, licking her lips at the smell of _gossip_.

"The first." He stops, takes a deep breath and says, "I'd like you to help me talk to Koushiro about the three of us - me, Meiko, and him- living together."

_Holy shit._

"Really? Now?" She tries not to sound scandalized and Mimi mostly succeeds in sounding heartened. Koushiro will be absolutely over the moon when he gets over the inevitable coming out that would have to happen with everyone eventually. Or he'll be concerned that Taichi was going to be one of those weirdos and his chances would be shattered. "Meimei's fine with it?"

"Meiko suggested it," Taichi corrects, cheeks lighting up pink. "She needs that kind of clout here and while _I _might be cool with whatever, I need her to be comfortable."

"That's adorable, I'm gonna puke," she tells him with a wide smile. "Oh I can definitely help you with that. It'll be easy."

"Second thing," he said as if she hadn't spoken at all. Mimi meets Taichi's eyes, ire creeping up her spine and then pauses.

"Your eyes are supposed to be brown," she said, struck a bit dumb by the sheer… _newness_ of it. The bright red doesn't fit his face, stark and catlike and… just not _right._

"I like them brown," Taichi replies. And they change back, smooth, shrinking a little to fit his face better, softer than ever. "Hikari doesn't bother because she's always liked red."

"So uh…" Mimi gives up on subtlety and spits out. "Are you an alien or something?"

Taichi grins and shakes his head. "No, we're Digimon."

She stares at him for a moment. "You're serious."

"As a kuwagamon to the head." He looks down at his drink. "Hikari and I never really had all the details. Our parents escaped to the human world at separate times, had us, raised us like humans as much as they could. The Digital World caught us anyway. We don't know what they were escaping from, but looking back, considering the time dilation, it could have been anything."

"You don't think Daigo-san and the others fought whatever it was."

Taichi shrugs a bit. "We might never know. But even so, we're back in time, pre-our past, pre being born. Our parents might be here."

Mimi opens her mouth to refute him, thinks, thinks of Hikari-chan's message, and then she feels her heart drop. "Oh."

She wants to be angry, wants to shake Taichi in his chair for hiding this, this hope, this _possibility_. But she wants to cry again too.

"If you'd found your parents," she begins slowly. "We could have found ours. Or… no." She thinks it over a little longer. "They needed to remember they were your parents. Because they'd remember going through time, and we'd be able to go home but… but they don't. Do they?"

"Based on what Hikari's message was, no, I don't think so." He sighs. "Sometimes she'll message me on the side. If it's private or she doesn't want Takeru or Daisuke to see it and get the wrong idea. But she sent that to Koushiro, which means I have to tell all of you guys and get the crap kicked out of me. And now we can start pushing the worlds together a lot sooner."

Mimi chews her lip. "What am I supposed to do?" Her role has always been one she's made herself. But this time, he's seeking her out, specifically asking her for help. What does she have aside from a general inability to not have a good time whenever?

Taichi regards her thoughtfully and for a moment, she thinks she can see that impossible mass of hair again. "It's not obvious?"

That stings, a little, but he's smiling, because he knows, and therefore if she thinks about it a while, it's obvious. But mostly she's just annoyed.

"Spill whatever you know," she orders. "Or I'm telling Sora-san _first._"

Cowed by the threat of his best friend, he does.

And from that Mimi remembers what she's always been good at.

It's not a good time, it's a good hand.

Tachikawa Mimi has always been good at opening people's hearts.

Sitting with Taichi over cake and coffee and devolving to arguments over who has the worst gen-ed experience, Mimi can always forget. But she glances at him in the window, and his eyes are a bright, soft red, there's a jagged edge to his smile and…

She has no idea how she could have missed it.

"What do you think is going to happen?" she asks once he's done and chugging water. "Will the Dark Masters come back? And we'll have to fight them all over again?"

As a child it hadn't felt possible by herself. Even together, it had taken so much.

Taichi blinks and butters a croissant so fast she swears she doesn't see him pick up the knife.

"You know the answer to that."

Mimi sits there and stews on how patronizing that sounds. Like she's still a child. Like she's…

"Fuck you," she says, not loudly, but firmly, but coldly. "Fuck you Taichi-san. That's not fair. That's not fair at all."

Taichi nods, sober-eyed, almost a little teary. "It's not," he agrees. "My parents tried to stop it, but… but Homeostasis was all alone." He shrugs mirthlessly. "We couldn't just leave her."

"But what about us?" she insists, slamming her hands on the table. "What about them? You can't be okay with it being our _kids_."

"Of course I'm not!"

She stops. His shoulders are shaking. People are looking around like they saw a ghost. The booth is just that private. "Of course I'm not okay with it." His voice is a whisper. "What can I do though? _Not _have a family? Leave Hikari alone to deal with that? I'm her brother."

"She chose this," she snips back, just for the sake of argument.

"So did we," he says with just as much acid. "Didn't we? We chose to go! She just chose to stay! I can't just put that burden on her and her hopefully hypothetical kids or family or the digimon! Or our digimon by themselves! What kind of partner would I be?"

For a moment, Mimi imagines Palmon standing alone over the great screaming monster towering over Tokyo, against VenomVamdemon with nothing but her vines and some water. Mimi chokes, and coughs into a napkin, eyes wet.

"That's not fair," she tells him when she can breathe again.

Taichi meets her eyes. "It's not, is it?"

Mimi wants to tell Taichi she hates him but it's not true, so she doesn't. She doesn't hate him. She doesn't even hate the god that put them here anymore. She hates destiny.

She hates being an adult.

"We'll make the worlds connect," she says, almost without thinking. "We'll train them. We'll… we'll raise them healthy and strong. Whatever we have to do. But if we can stop it, if we can stop them, make it not them, we…"

Taichi nods. "We'll do what we can do."

Mimi swallows the bitter taste in her throat.

"I'm not defending you in there," she tells him.

"I would be worried if you did, Mimi." Taichi grins and all the window shows is mischief. "So, Koushiro?"

Mimi's eyes sparkle a little, faint and tired. "Oh you have to earn that one from him."

He doesn't pout, but it's close.


	6. Chapter 5

_Notes: Trans male character, relationships and their complexities, aromantic character, the use of a profane word_

* * *

Chapter Five - Purple - 1978

Izumi Koushiro struggles with courage.

Figuratively of course. Bravery has never been one of his strong suits. It's mostly blunt honesty covered by ignorance to the mood. Taichi would say he was brave of course, but Taichi could see courage in getting out of bed every day.

It's endearing, embarrassing and somehow, makes him ache.

Koushiro doesn't struggle with observation. He records his cycle meticulously, budgets with care, notices his coworker looking at the girl at the school canteen like she holds the world on her drastically underpaid shoulders and steers him away before he makes a fool of himself each time.

He notices the way Taichi and Meiko hold hands in public, and the way he fumbles over ribbons and sketchpads with her favorite brand of pen. He notices the way Taichi smiles at him is the exact same curve of a line and makes his dimples all the more obvious. He notices the way he listens to Koushiro now, scribbling in pen and nodding along even when he doesn't understand half of it. He's invested in a way his friend had used to be in soccer, and at the moment Koushiro isn't sure if that interest is in his work or in Koushiro himself.

Koushiro doubts, of course. He hadn't known that Taichi had an interest in those parts of adulthood, let alone the romantics of it, even with his crush on Sora, or even the logistics.

Mimi is certain of the latter. "He acted like I was the father sending off their kid on a prom date," she had told him, though her eyes had been troubled and uncomfortable and when pressed had only insisted that was Koushiro's job to ask about.

So he had intended to, but every week on the dot they sat down with their projects and homework and as he calculated formulas and debated the ethics of prosthesis when no one knew about the tiny parts, the rest of him had watched Taichi on the other side of him, watched him chew his ugly plastic cartoon pens and furrow his brow like the paper had insulted him. He would scratch at words slowly, cautiously, and it would be late before they realized it. And he would forget. And they'd celebrate with Taichi's carefully made omurice and cans of cola and tea.

And he'd keep forgetting, day after day of doing this. But today they don't sit down with homework. Koushiro's papers are stacked neatly to the right of steaming tea mugs, Taichi has a legal folio and Meiko is sitting across from him.

The nervous high schooler isn't gone exactly, but the lack of that father, whatever kind of person he might have been, seemed enough to get an easier smile, and a smoother pair of glasses. Her hair is short now, and she looks at him like he's opened up a box of her favorite candies and given her the best flavor.

"He'll be here soon," she says with a sigh. "New York train lines and he thought we needed a better fare than a fast meal."

Koushiro grimaces. "Of course." His grimace warped into a smile before he could quite stop it. "Is there any particular reason why?"

Not why was she here of course not. They were roommates not lovers (and boy did that jab at his gut) and Meiko was just as eager to hear about Koushiro's theories as everyone else. And also to message Hikari, since it was rare they heard from her.

"We'd like to speak with you about something important," Meiko replies, looking him in the eye. "For all of us."

_This is it,_ he thinks before the thought can quite derail. _They want to move in and they want me to stay but I'll be a third wheel and-_

"I see." He stops, awkwardly, before the bile spills out. Since it's no one's fault, not even his, that this situation is even happening. It just _did._

Meiko doesn't mean any harm or to hurt him at all. They just happen to both love the same person, and it makes things difficult for everyone because she can say yes and he… can't. Not without going back in the closet.

And not even Taichi is worth that. And Taichi would never ask him to.

Meiko doesn't look at him directly either. Rather she looks at the dumb beta fish that they had gotten as a joke gift from Takeru-kun on Christmas that he still can't understand. Still, she talks and he makes himself listen.

"Taichi and I would like you to join our relationship," she says.

And yes there it is there's the- wait.

"I… I beg your pardon?"

Meiko nods, looking expectant. "Taichi and I have thought about this for a while. He likes you, very much and you've been very kind to me. And while that isn't necessarily the basis for love, it can be. And I don't want you two, who are close, to separate because of strange outdated ethical codes, and I don't want either of us to have to choose to be unhappy for the sake of those either. I believe we all deserve the opportunity to try."

"I…" He stops and reaches for his favorite diversion tactic: blunt honesty. "I was expecting you to tell me I had to move out within a certain date because you were moving in."

She smiles. "I expected that was what Taichi would tell me when he brought this up. He loves you, well, much as society expects him to anyway. Those sorts of feelings are rather foreign to him."

"You make him sound like a sociopath," Koushiro says, a little sourness on his tongue.

She shakes her head no, eyes widening. "Not at all! He just doesn't understand romance, he doesn't have romantic feelings for someone in the way we know it as. It's complicated for him and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I feel that way and you do as well."

"You talk to Mimi-san too much," he accuses without any bite.

She laughs. "She's my best friend, Koushiro."

He smiles because he understands, he does. But he sobers because the rest of it is still… afraid. "So… he won't ever love me?"

"He already does," Meiko says in that way that toddlers are taught to say that the sky is blue, even though it's not because we can't see the color and the ocean isn't blue, blue is a god damn construct of a concept for describing things more easily it's all fake. "I can't promise to you or prove it to you, but I'm positive about it. We had to figure out our system and we'll do it again. With you."

Koushiro is torn between joy at the hope of it, fear of learning another social dance when he struggles with all the rest, and exhaustion at the idea that they have no way of being certain, and it could all be under the veil of "they think Izumi Koushiro is a normal boy with a lump of flesh between his legs who isn't sporty and wears boxers and may lean towards liking other men, who stays indoors with turtlenecks as people outside die from AIDS because the world is full of homophobic bastards and cowards in power".

Meiko is still looking at him. He swallows because she's been honest with him, in the good way, the certain way that's full of courage. And he needs that courage.

"Could I tell you a secret?" he asks. "And you won't drive me out even then?"

Meiko pauses, puzzlement creeping in behind her lenses. "Sure," she says. "I'll tell you one of mine and Taichi's if you want. It's fair that way."

Meiko always thinks of fairness, maybe not in fairness, but of it and maybe that's why she's learned five different variations of braille and some curse words in Dutch.

"All right," he agrees because he doubts they'll get there. She nods and waits for him to say it, which takes a few minutes of not backing out. "I wasn't born a boy," Koushiro finally says, cheeks flaming, heart thumping loudly.

There's a little silence, and he can't see anything because he's shut his eyes to her reaction. Koushiro doesn't quite understand how he could say it to Meiko and not Taichi but he's done it now so it's probably best to start packing his things.

"So you weren't born with a penis?"

Koushiro blinks his eyes open and meets her gaze properly. She looks curious, hands neat in her lap and not spewing… some kind of heavy emotions.

"I…" he flushes harder. "No, not really." It's more than that, a lot more, really but he only really wants to explain it once.

Meiko hums. "So you have periods?"

He swallows his tongue. "Unfortunately."

"Mm." She licks her lips and then shrugs. "Well, all right."

Koushiro admits his jaw fell open. "I… What?"

Meiko smiles wearily. "I don't really understand it but… all right. I'm willing to. Besides, I'm not really able to judge if I'm honest."

That trail of thought is sufficiently disturbing enough that he almost doesn't want to know. Almost. "I see."

She nods, a bit smug. "Taichi helped me discover I like sharp teeth. Can't get much weirder than that."

Koushiro is pretty sure that they _can_, but he's more disturbed by that and admittedly terribly curious. "And… and how did he do that?" They're implying they want to work out a three way romantic relationship is this what they talk about?

Meiko shrugs, but it's a little too forced, her shoulders up a little too sharp and down a little too fast. "Well, he _has_ them, I'd have to have figured it out somewhere."

"_What."_

Taichi comes in at that exact pause, arms laden with bags of food. At the sight of them with their cheeks flushed and looking away from each other like they committed several debaucherous crimes, he pouts. "You were supposed to wait for me."

This is too much and they both start laughing, Koushiro near hysteria at the utter put outness he's having flow off of him like waves.

"Well, we can start again for you, if you want," Meiko says once she can breathe. "We didn't get to the part of you on one knee with two rings and a goofy smile on your face."

"A goofy smile you _like_, I might add," Taichi shoots back, smiling at Koushiro like he's doing something important. Koushiro flushes at the implication. But he sits back, lets Taichi serve the food. But then the man settles back, thumbing on something, the old cell phone from before the end of their world.

"That's how Hikari-san messages you," Koushiro says.

Mimi had hinted that was going to happen.

Taichi looks at him, square in the eyes (Koushiro twitches) and then nods. "Got it in one."

Koushiro swallows a bite and looks to Meiko. She nods, smiles encouragingly. Koushiro thinks about it.

There are pros and cons to this, there's so much to talk about. How they will work, how to handle the whispering and rumors, the hell that will come, the idea of children, how taxes will work, how the others will handle it. There was so much to talk about and everywhere to start. But it also comes with the possibility of being happy.

How was he supposed to say no to that?

As he's thinking, Meiko is leaning casually onto Taichi's shoulder in the most shameless affection possible (for Japanese couples, the time they were in, and the casualness is almost awe inspiring) to look at the screen. She lets out a giggle.

"We haven't even proposed yet," Taichi says, tossing the phone onto the table with a huff.

"She said she was ringing wedding bells," Meiko translates, still giggling. Koushiro hears himself laugh.

They don't talk for a while, not about this. They eat and chat about their day. Taichi tells them about the incident on the subway, Meiko shows them a slow sentence in JSL and Koushiro tells them about his friends who are bonding over mechanical exoskeletons.

("They're boning," Taichi tells him with a pitying look on his face.

"Well yes, I know that," Koushiro shoots back with a huff. "As long as it's not on the table. The materials are kept clean for a reason."

Meiko fails to control her own laughter.)

That before Koushiro's realized it, he's sitting beside them, watching a movie. Something they've probably seen a dozen times and thought nothing of until now.

"You know," he says after a while. "We will need to be honest with each other to make this work, including myself."

Taichi nods at him, Meiko looking sleepily at them both. It was rather late. "We'll certainly try to be," Taichi says to him in return. "I can't make promises, but I'm going to work to be."

"Me as well."

Koushiro clasps his hands together so they don't shake. "So then," he says, voice trembling with the secret he's locked up for almost twenty years. "Where do we start?"


	7. Chapter 6

_Warnings: child death, anxiety, acute depression, disassociation, vomit._

_(Unrelated, but hmu on tumblr if you want a pic of Jou's fiancee OC.)_

* * *

Chapter Six - Gray - 1982

Jou remembers, quite vividly, Leomon dying by his hands.

Not underneath them, exactly but dying still and there being no knowledge in the world, no friendship, no higher power, that would have or could have saved him. He remembers how the lion spoke, so serene and painful, but determined to get the words out, for them. Sacrificing a few moments of bliss for a higher power, a greater purpose: Them.

Somewhere in his twelve-year-old mind, Jou had thought death was supposed to be that, not pretty exactly, but something you nobly accept because it had to come.

"Time of death," he murmured to himself as his co-worker began moving towards the next bed. "18:58." He scribbled it down on the clipboard, his gloves clean and his eyes set on the paper. He continued to note down observations, expression taut, shoulders up, moving clinically as he had been taught by his father and brother and teachers.

He made the mistake then, of going to close the eyes. The eyes were already closed, because the patient had been sleeping, small bony hands clenched around a stuffed animal still too tight. It's little cotton weaves were bent in, nails having dug into the 'skin' sometime during the night.

So small.

Jou doesn't really remember much after this. He must have gotten to his lunch break, because there was a small stain of (blood) sauce on the wrist of his coat. He must have gotten through his shift, because he has all of his things neatly organized in his bag, his scrubs in their bag and all, and he's suddenly, vividly aware of the train seats digging into his back, but he remembers none of it.

In fact, the only reason he's sure he got safely home, is that Mie, his fiancee, is staring him right in the face, concern creasing her brow and her blue eyes are fixed on his in a way he'd always liked before but now he can't remember why.

"What happened?" she asks in that stern way that's usually very grounding.

He blinks at her, baffled. "It was a rough day," he tells her. Because that was what happened, right? "The morning was worse, so I'm just happy to be home."

"Did someone die, Jou?"

_Someone's always dying, _he wants to tell her, he wants to cry out and spit out but he can't.

_Data particles fly off into the grey, empty sky._

_Countless flatlines echoes through the hospital floor. _

He breathes a ragged sob in and throws up on his shoes.

* * *

Jou, this time, is aware of everything. His fiancee gently leads him to sit on the couch and eat (the sheer dirtiness of it was an itch on his spine but he lets it go today). He's aware of fumbling his pajamas on, of the nice scent of cinnamon and cloves she took with her from Britain that isn't lavender or antiseptic or rotting flowers at all.

She settles beside him, solid, warm, living, and Jou cries again and it's honestly embarrassing, but she doesn't say anything. Just lets him weep and look stupid and hopeless.

"We're not salvaging your shoes," she tells him and he laughs, wet and choking a bit. That's how Mie has always been. She's sweet, sure, very grounded, but she doesn't mince words. She doesn't pretend the world will be better than it is, and she doesn't pretend he's weak for things like humanity and allergies and anxiety. She just accepts it, and calls him out on what can be fixed instead.

It… doesn't always help. But he has friends to help with the rest of it.

"Gomamon would try," he says before he can stop himself.

He watches Mie's face shutter closed and then open up again as she shrugs and admits. "Probably. You make him sound like an optimist."

"He was." He pauses, corrects. "Is." If Gomamon dies he really will lose it.

"Don't force it, big guy."

Jou smiles a little more and drinks some water. He supposes that it's true, you can't cry and drink at the same time.

"You know it's always going to be like this, right?"

Her voice is that same, steady serene, and he's not really ready to hear the words she says, but that's probably why she's saying them. So he doesn't have to. So he can be hopeful and reliable and the steady rock who endures the awful things in the world, like his crest wanted him to. Like his crest said he could do.

Sometimes the Crests were wrong.

Still. Jou exhales, a shuddering breath and a sigh. "I know. This one was just… hard, that's all."

Mie nods and nudges the plate to his hands. It's informal, he can hear his father rolling over and screaming in non-existence, but he follows it anyway. He does need to eat.

And this food, it doesn't take like ashes. So he eats it and asks for seconds and cries again.

The next day, he goes to his shift, early, and changes his direction with his head. His hands do shake, but there are messages on his pager from his friends. Their mailbox has a care package from Mimi and Wallace.

Things go on, life goes on.

* * *

Jou is not okay.

He's not alone but he feels like he is and he's not okay.

Then Koushiro calls him for dinner and there's nothing in his schedule that lets him refuse.

He wants to though, and he doesn't know why.

But Jou knows that's bad. Knows what that looks like. Remembers his father when he'd been 17, trying to reconnect after years and years and life of scolding, disappointment and mistrust.

It grates on him to be even close to that. So he defies that terrible urge to sit at home and be a couch potato and says "yes of course" when he couldn't mean anything less.

And it's hard to feel bad, seeing his fiancee dressed up the way she is. Still formal, a dress that's probably older than Jou feels, but it fits her like gloves do his fingers and it's very nice and he-

He is floundering again.

She doesn't take his hand, but when his fingers find her leg she plants hers over his like no one is watching.

And Jou is able to breathe. It hurts a bit, like those first few days he'd been out of his inhaler prescription, but better. Basically. No other way to put it but that.

The place they choose is cheap and small, even though Jou knows and Mie knows and everyone knows that if Koushiro had been born (in their time) thirty years from now he'd be so high up the ladder on his giant galaxy brain alone that these farts would be under his boots and the world would be a better place, but it's not and so he and the other two are saving yen coins and Taichi works longer hours in more countries than Jou has ever heard of. And they look too tired for fancy food anyway (Jou feels too tired to pretend he wants his healthy diet right now even though he loves eating it) and so he's more than happy to sit out of place in a small place and drink a little sake.

Meiko declines, gently, of course, but firmly and the hope in her eyes is unprecedented.

Jou, understandably, hopes for her, too.

They have small talk, more because they have to rather than because they want to. And when the food is in hand and they're about to share, Koushiro pauses and raises his hand. He leans in, and he says, "My coworkers made a portal."

Jou almost spits and Mie blinks. Because she knows, and she knows a lot because he couldn't lie to her, but she doesn't _understand_. "What?"

Koushiro grins at the look on his face, and the mischief is only here now because there's nothing left to lose and Taichi's a terrible influence on all of them. "Two of my coworkers, who have no concept of healthy work habits-"

"Hypocrite," Jou lobs at him with a feeling pulsing through his fingers.

"Called me this morning and said they got a spark of a portal. They aren't aware of where to, and they're crashed on the lab couch, but they managed it and I got a message from Hikari-san and Gomamon."

"... Holy shit." Jou stops and thinks about it, wipes the swear out of his mouth. "Gomamon? How?"

"According to him, she was visiting for ambassadorial reasons and he was telling her she wasn't supposed to be in the cold at the time." Koushiro smiles faintly, and Meiko keeps eating, rather placid, or bitter. Jou isn't sure, they really don't know each other as well as the rest yet.

"Still, they…" Jou looks down at his food and has never been more uninterested in nutrition in his life because Gomamon had been in reach. "They did it?"

"Yes." Koushiro sighs. "And I've tried and tried, for years. My computer just can't do it anymore without parts that don't exist yet."

"Or might never exist, the way you're going on." Mie's voice is light, not cheerful, but it sounds harmless in a way Jou knows that it's _not _harmless. Mie remembers, remembers more than he gives her credit and gods it's hard it's so hard to look at her and know that's also their fault. Their mistakes have always been larger than life, but here is where it stings more than it should.

But Koushiro doesn't pick up on this, thankfully, and continues on. "So that is what makes this so significant. It's still damaging to the veil-"

"I'm sorry, the what." Mie has to interrupt, and is met with a raised eyebrow in return from Meiko. Jou hides a smile in his chopsticks.

"That's the technical terminology they gave it," Koushiro replies, supremely nonplussed. He'd always been good at that. "We consider it what keeps our universes from crashing into each other. There are multiple worlds, imagine if they all fell together. Or even just two."

"Are data and organics not compatible?"

Koushiro brightens up so much Jou hides his eyes. "No, actually. You convert one way or another depending on the world you're in, at least in the case of the major two we have interacted with. Furthermore…"

Meiko waves a hand at Jou, smiling in that indulgent way that she's probably practiced on Mimi more times than she would care to admit. "It seems like she'll be a while," she says in that gentle voice of hers that's far too fond of the whole thing. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," he says automatically, the sound of his voice hollow and his food tasting like soot and dirt.

"Liar," she says back just as fast, but with that smile. "You don't have to tell me… but is there anything i can do?"

Jou wants to tell her no, wants to tell her how bad he felt -still feels- over taking for granted something he'd lost and been able to snatch back, wants to demand to know what she thinks she can do, wants to tell her how he wants her ability to look and feel at peace when she should feel the least peaceful of all of them.

But Jou can't… say those things. Not because he needs to be seen as the truly adult, oldest, responsible one. They're all adults now, and they all are responsible for each other and other things. So it's not his to bear alone anymore either.

He smiles weakly and says, "Can we just try to make today a good day?"

She looks at him thoughtfully, then smiles and responds. "Did you hear Taichi failed his driving test?"

"Why is he even trying to drive?"

"It looks good to Americans."

Jou laughs and means it and can only imagine the man looking at a stick shift with nothing less than abject terror.

"Did he look at cars first?"

The look on Meiko's face is priceless, but she goes along with it, and eventually fold their helplessly argumentative and intelligent spouses back into the discussion.

And Jou feels all right, for once.

"You said," Jou says as they head towards the train, half the bill paid and the other half pocketed for a cheap ice cream he shouldn't have but is going to anyway. "That it's always going to be like this."

Mie nods, regarding him underneath her own glasses. "I did."

"I think you're wrong," he says after another thought. "Because if so that means nursing is going to be a lot of things, and you can't quantify that."

"Well," she responds after a few seconds. "That's because quantifying you would just give you a heart attack."

"That doesn't suddenly make you right."

"No," she agrees. "Just makes me a delight to be around."

Jou chortles at her. "Fine."

"It's going to be better," she says as they walk up the stairs. "And worse. And tolerable. We just can't predict when, that's all."

"Not very reliable."

"No." Mie grins. "But I can count on you to be."

Jou tries not to laugh, fails, and boldly takes her hand and squeezes it. She squeezes it back, and they head for home.


	8. Interlude

_Warnings: Implied death, polyamory, trauma, euphemisms. (I'm not tagging underage because nothing actually happened, OCs, secondhand murder because_ reboot.

* * *

Interlude - Colorless 1974-1981

For Wallace, he remembers the beginning, but not how it ends. He's in a field hospital, alone, head wound up with bandages. His partners are nowhere to be found. There's not even an egg.

He is, for the first time since he was four years old and told he would never have a brother or sister, completely alone in a room.

The first thing he does is call his mother. He gets a dial tone in reply from the payphone.

He doesn't quite remember what he does after that but he comes into himself again back in the hospital room, curled on the bed, and Lopmon's ear on his shoulder.

Lopmon. Not Chocomon. It's Lopmon, calm and clear and lucid and _not dead_. His eyes are very steady and he's smiling a little.

"I snuck in," he says, proudly. "Terriermon's coming, but he was hungry and their vending machines aren't as good, but he's coming." The little rabbit-dog gently presses against his shoulder. "It's okay, Wallace. We're here. It'll be okay."

Wallace lets out a sob and hugs him tight. Because for once, everything feels all right.

The Digital World and human world had been falling apart before, he remembered. He remembered pulling his mother into their basement, chatting frantically to his girlfriend, with her tiny miserable alraumon going into battle. What if she was dead?

Lopmon noses his cheek again, looking all the world like a kicked puppy. "I'm sorry Wallace."

"For what," he gets out. "This stuff isn't your fault."

"No," he says. "But that doesn't mean I'm not sorry it's happening to you anyway. I was always sorry and always hurting you and… well, I just wanted to say it. You know?"

Wallace chokes out another sob and holds his bunny tight. "Yeah. I know."

And they wait together, all alone.

Or at least, they feel alone for a long, long time.

Then, his baggy jacket, little more than a rag with pockets now, glows a soft minty green. Lopmon hops over to get it, examining what's left of a pocket.

"Wallace," Lopmon murmurs. "It's a d-terminal."

"Oh." Wallace remembers those. He could have used those in his travels while running from Chocomon but by that point he hadn't had much time to think about it, or friends to contact. But the other kids had had them, and they usually worked no matter what. "Bring it here."

"How about a please?" cracks his bunny but it is done within a few minutes of waddling, just as Terriermon hops through the window. He has a sack of clearly stolen food and a very stolen sack.

But for them, old habits die hard and the skin under his partner's fur is red raw, so Wallace doesn't say anything as he pops it open. Instantly the mail icon explodes, messages nearly burst on screen.

_What's going on?_

_What happened?_

_My parents are dead! _

_Someone lives in my house!_

_What happened in Japan? It was Japan right?_

And finally, one long message from Izumi Koushiro, saying very simply. _We apologize for the confusion. Please check this message for further updates. The short version is: Homeostasis, who assisted in creating us all as Chosen Children, was forced to reboot the worlds themselves. One of our group is venturing to the Digital World to search for a way back and ascertain the situation. My apologies, but this is all I know at this time._

That seems like a fat load of crap and most people seem to believe it too. At least until Daisuke, who last Wallace had heard was dead, came on and said, _That's what happened now leave us alone! Some of us are recovering from not dying and stuff._

The endless pinging goes quiet, but Wallace can't resist adding, _Sleeping Beauty needs his rest, huh._

Daisuke responds to him privately with relish. _We can't all look freshly rolled out of the hay Wallace. I happen to take extra care of these gorgeous noodle-making hands every day._

_I wouldn't call that gorgeous._ He pauses, hesitates, but asks anyway. _What happened?_

He doesn't get an answer.

The nurse comes in just as Terriermon and Lopmon hide under the bed, check him over, and after some paperwork, let him go with a "someone's looking for you!" sort of deal. He obediently goes where they directed him and pauses at the door.

"Sally," he says.

His girlfriend looks at him with one eye, an arm in bandages, Alraumon on her feet. "Hey," she says.

"Hey yourself," Wallace says, and breaks down crying again. Thinks of his friends, the living and the dead, and mourns them all.

* * *

He doesn't remember the end of the world, no one remembers what took them back there but he thinks there's a voice, a girl who is patting his sweat soaked head and smiling before the light comes and pulls.

* * *

They end up meeting Mimi, months later. She has no Palmon and she looks worn and drained.

He hugs her. Sally tries to slug her in the gut. He says tries because Mimi, sweet, polite, not-violent Mimi, throws her over her shoulder into the grass.

"Holy shit," Terriermon says.

Mimi stares at them, hollow-eyed and tired and shaking. "I'm sorry," she says, half a squeak, and half a _not sorry_ there. "I just… I won't let anyone stomp on me now. Not like this. Japan was awful."

"Well…" Wallace tries to say. "You're back now." Both girls shoot him a look and he steps back. "It's not wrong."

Mimi sighs. "I need coffee. And cake. With sprinkles."

Lopmon makes a disgusted noise as Terriermon lights up with glee. Sally, however, looks thoughtful.

"I'll trade you shortcake for answers."

Mimi's eyes sparkle. "Deal."

Later, Wallace is torn between wishing she hadn't because there was nothing in the world like hearing your past repeat itself like a terrible film reel, or glad Sally had, because it had been years since he'd gotten to watch Snow White without being considered a massive dweeb.

He's still a dweeb, of course.

* * *

School ends, almost for good, and Wallace, a master of roughing it, invites them to travel. Both girls agree without a second thought.

And it's nice. It's fairly busy, and Wallace had never expected to see Mimi light a fire and look fashionable in mud, but well, there you go. Lopmon is often on Mimi somewhere, as if too many years apart and fighting were enough to have to start from zero.

And besides, it stops Mimi from looking at Alraumon and looking away with tears in her eyes.

Yet no matter how hard they try, she won't talk about Japan a second time, not about home, not about her friends. The rare phone calls, the letters, the strange way she fiddles with her cell phone that should be long dead. She just looks sad and tired and worn out when they try.

"It's not my part to say," she tells them.

They meet Michael in Colorado, and find the cabin the man and the Seadramon had built themselves.

"Summer home," he jokes at them and laughs at the look on Sally's face.

Wallace rolls his eyes and takes a picture for the group. The American section lets out cheers and everyone else sleeps through it.

There's a person always on idle in the group chat. Even as they go on three years of no idea what to do and stumbling through life almost all alone, they don't talk. They're constantly online as online can be and they follow most of the chats (thank god for forums) but they never talk, even when they get pinged.

It makes Wallace uneasy, because he knows who it is, and he doesn't like that silence.

* * *

They stop at Wallace's home in Summer Memory, Colorado and Wallace swallows at the dust. At the rotted wood and rust on the chains. He cries and Sally squeezes his arm because it hurts all over again.

Terriermon squints at the water pump. "I bet I could pump this by myself now."

Lopmon snorts and it's bitter and tired. "I would hope so."

Wallace laughs. Mimi however, is tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"We could rebuild this," she says. "All of us."

"Do we really need another summer home?" Michael jokes.

Mimi rolls her eyes. "I'm experimenting in yours."

"So it's the home equivalent of the couch?" Sally offers.

They laugh and it hurts.

Wallace looks at his house again, at its decrepit state. Then he exhales. "You know what? Yeah. I'd like to live here again." He glances around. "Maybe with all of you around. I'll think about it."

Sally punches him in the arm with one hand, and pulls out a ring with the other.

"What the hell?" he grumbles, and Mimi whoops and cheers as Michael mimics a piano dirge. It's just embarrassing.

This message gets a low note of _congrats bud, I guess._

And Wallace sighs. He hadn't wanted to go _that far west._

At least the asshole was talking.

* * *

California is their second to last stop because Wallace has the connections they kind of lack, and two of them were supposed to meet them there to talk about Australia, or some other place. Some place equally as cursed.

But they only meet one, one lone girl with hair as blue as the sea that's actually looking at them. And she's weeping and suddenly Wallace feels twelve years old again.

"Ada what happened?" He reaches for her and she jerks back. He stops, remembers, motions to the others to scoot back. She's partnerless and sobbing and cursing his ears blue until the name Julie slips from her mouth. "Cripes, slow down, please you're babbling-"

"Her sister's in the hospital," said someone, cold, nasally, angry. "Because you guys decided to take the god damn scenic route."

And Mimi watches as Wallace's face shutters closed, angry, hollow. "Hi to you too Ricky."

The young man grunts from his chair, sitting with a small red dragon the size of a giant Alaskan Malamute at minimum and sipping a cold tea. "Hi yourself. You could have sent a letter."

"And watch it go unanswered like the last twelve. Forget it." He pats the stranger girl on the back as she sniffles

Mimi glances at Sally, who shrugs and says, "Our fiancee's a man of intrigue."

Michael chokes on a laugh and this gets the attention of the short man, who scowls at them.

"Have some decency a woman's crying," he says to him and Michael raises an eyebrow. He goes ignored and the man (Ricky?) glances at them all with disinterest, until he recognizes Mimi. His eyes widen a smidgen. "Oh, no wonder you're late. You were getting all chummy with the _Chosen Ones._"

The last bits are a sneer at best.

"Unless your digivice got flushed down the toilet again, you've also got one of those mate," Wallace says, offering Ada a tissue. "Mind not pissing off our only lead on figuring out shit? We've been doing so well at making her like us."

"He makes it sound so dirty," Sally mutters and Mimi snorts and walks up to Ricky with a smile.

"Oh don't do that," he says, voice sullen. "I know who you are. I know what you did. Or, didn't do, rather."

Mimi's smile doesn't die. In fact, it goes up about three hundred watts. "Nice to meet you too," she says and she means it and it stings. "Can we be civil?"

"I thought you were Japanese, Mimi."

"You'd better hope I start acting like it Michael." Her eyes burn.

"You killed my mom," Ricky says in answer to her question.

"She deserved it," Wallace mutters with dedication.

"Then put handcuffs on me and put me in jail," Mimi replies without fear and looking him dead in the eyes. "I promise it won't change a single thing."

Wallace looks up, just in time to see the muscles in the squat man's body twitch. He leans to do something, no idea what, but it's not in time to stop the other's fist from hitting Mimi square in the gut.

She skids backwards and Sally leaps to catch her (when did they get so close?) but Mimi rights herself with her fist, nose and mouth dripping blood, and eyes still set and firm.

"You feel better?" she says.

Ricky doesn't answer, but he doesn't squirm. Anger meets something else. Determination, maybe.

"You want to know what happened?" Mimi continues, unopposed, seemingly unaware of the whispering and pointing fingers and running towards payphones. "You want to know? We had no idea what we were doing. We were caught between two gods and all of the media and four of our friends were missing for months and we could do _nothing_." Her voice wavers but she clears her throat and goes on. "We met someone who was trying to look after someone they love and they failed. We watched someone die, we watched the world die and _we kept going. We keep on going. We have to. And none of you have, and none of you even seem to want to do anything but blame us and look down on and be the very people you're condemning." _ She breathes sharply and coughs and wipes her face but she refuses to look away from him. "This is not easy. This is hard and I want to curl up in my sleeping bag or be home with my friends but I'm here because we're going to do something if it kills us. What are you going to do, other than hurt people? Because if you're not going to do anything, go somewhere where you _will_ because we don't need more dead bodies. I have seen _enough_, my friends have seen _enough_, and our _children _are going to see more if we don't do something. So I'm doing what I can and I don't care if you approve or not. We're living our lives how we choose. We're just not choosing how everyone else has to."

She turns towards Wallace and Ada and kneels down beside her. "Can you take me to your sister?"

The young woman nods, mutely, surprise burning her face.

Wallace looks at Ricky, who is just sitting there, looking sullen and tired. "I don't know what you thought was going to happen there bud."

"Piss off." But he's back in his seat and there are no police so, cool.

"No," Wallace sat beside him. "I have no idea what you're going through."

"Nothing new there."

"And honestly, I don't care."

"Oh fuck you." Ricky's face is red, darker, under the beard.

"I don't care, man. At least you have your dad and your shitty brother."

"He's not shitty."

"He spends half the time being a grade A piece of work and the other half being a grade C piece of work. Go take a GED class and leave Cali, man. You need to go outside and not punch meal tickets."

Sally smacks him on the head. "Mimi's not a meal ticket."

"No she's a snack."

_Thwack. _"You both suck."

"Good," Ricky mutters. "Why does she get to flaunt how much this screwed her over?"

"Last I checked you have the influence with god here, not me, not her, not anyone we know." Wallace settles in the free chair. "And, honestly. You were being an ass."

Ricky makes a face. Then he slumps. "Fine, I guess."

"You reserve the right to be pissed, not to hit people. Say sorry to her, she actually wants to fix this shit."

"... Fine."

"Keep behaving and I'll name you godfather to our first kid."

"You all and your talk about _childbirth_," Ricky wrinkles his nose. "Freaking gross."

"Well we can't all play sega genesis until the cows come home can we?"

Life, as Wallace realizes it must, goes on. Because it has to, and now they have a lot of answers and more problems and no solutions.

And, he knows, their digimon.

He glances at Ricky. "Actually, Asshat McGee, I've got a better idea."

"Riveting."


	9. Chapter 7

_Warning: Daisuke angst, PTSD, past injuries_

* * *

_Chapter Seven - Blue - 1986_

Motomiya Daisuke is grateful for one thing in his life, and that's ramen.

Well, no he's grateful for a lot of people, but that's harder to admit. Being grateful for the existence of ramen is like, a no-brainer. People? People are much harder. He nearly trips on the doorway, arms laden with groceries. "Oi, Ken, c'mere and help your aching partner!"

"Shut it you," came Miyako from the dining room table. "I can carry a few bags."

"Yeah you can," Daisuke agrees. "But Ken's just being lazy."

Miyako snatched a few of the bags. "No, Ken's on internship. You forgot again."

His cheeks color and guilt rises up in the depths of and sours the banter. "Oh… right." He scratches his cheek with his now free hand. "Sorry."

Miyako looks at him with the look he often equated with "are you okay?" in a nice but still annoying way. Especially after-

_The looming shadow of a monster taller than all of their partners combined, a green light pointed at their heads._

Being locked in a tube alone for months on end would do that to you.

"It's fine," she says with a shrug and carries it all over. "I thought you'd be working late."

"We considered it." He sets the rest of the food down with a grin. "But something exploded and there was a fight so since I was in the back we had to close up."

"Good enough for me." She begins digging around for her favorite tea, which of course he bought extra of. "Mimi-san called this morning."

"Yeah? Did she get that gig?" God he hoped she did, there was nothing more awful to him than the agony of waiting for the slender possibility of doing well and risking not paying rent.

"I think so." She places vegetables on the table and washes a bit of cabbage. The rice cooker dings. "She was pretending like she could keep a secret so I bet you that was it."

"She's probably waiting to tell everyone all at once." Daisuke rummages through the fridge. "Hey, what do you want to do on Sunday?"

"Sleep, mostly."

Daisuke laughs. "Yeah, fair enough." He finishes moving things around, taking out food that Ken had forgotten in his busy, late nights, finding ends and bits he could hopefully still mulch into dirt and donate to the nearby school's gardening club. "How's the tech shop?"

Miyako lets out a groan. "I miss bigger monitors!"

Daisuke laughs so hard his stomach hurts and he has to stop and sit down. Miyako doesn't say anything when he does, but her hand rubs circles into his back until the phantom pain leaves him a little more able.

"Someone should have told me adulthood hurts more," he says after a while. "This shit sucks."

Miyako nods and settles beside him after guiding him towards the couch. Even now, after years of doing it, years of practice and comfort and fights about it, the feeling still rankles, the hollow uselessness still rankles, his anger at the god who couldn't have fixed them before poofing off into the old universe and dying burns. But the helplessness is the worst of it.

Everyone seems to understand, and Daisuke is sure they get it in their own ways, but Daisuke resents people he shouldn't now, because it's not their fault they got out physically all right while the adventure just really got real for him.

And it's times like today that he gets why Hikari-chan left and it still makes him taste bile.

"She emailed me today," Miyako finally says and there's no question to who.

"Oh thank god," Daisuke says and he means that too and fuck, god this, this is so hard why didn't his parents warn him about _this?_ All this complicated bullcrap, why can't people just talk? Heck even Ken talking about his dark feelings is better than nothing! "Any explanations for why we lost touch this time?"

"She got married."

"She _what_." Daisuke's mouth drops open. "And I'm not even allowed to cater?"

Miyako snorts. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get to have her taste your heavenly spice bomb of death."

"Don't even joke she'd tell me to put horseradish in it." He whistles. "I'm jealous of her husband, whoever he is."

"Same."

"Same," calls Ken as he knocks the door open. "To whatever it is."

"I want to marry Hikari-chan," Daisuke shouts at him. "And she's getting married!"

Ken frowns, jacket still slung over his shoulder like a heathen as he meets them. "Well, doesn't everyone?"

"I'll fistfight you for Takeru," Miyako tells them both, eyebrows going high and pretending like she can actually make a fist nowadays for longer than a solid minute.

"You'd probably win," Ken answers, sitting on Daisuke's other side with easy (easy now, not easy before) affection and an arm on both of their shoulders. "But that doesn't mean you don't want to marry Yagami-san. And why are we talking about that in the first place? And what about Iori-kun, he probably feels abandoned."

"The only man Iori would date willingly is Takeru and maybe Jou but they'd only last until they left the building," Daisuke says too cheerfully because it was hilarious to think about in comparison to the rest. "Hikari-chan got married and I didn't even get to cater."

Or meet the guy. Or give his favorite best friend speech he's been reserving for Takeru since that day at the Dark Ocean or whatever. He sighs, all the fight and fun taken out of him. Ken rests his chin on Daisuke's head, which is a bastard move because the bishounen shouldn't be taller than him. "Why isn't she home?" Daisuke murmurs.

Ken frowns, Daisuke can feel it. "Technically she is."

He wrinkles his nose. "I guess." He's still not happy Taichi kept that from them for years, but to be fair when would it actually have come up in conversation? "Why isn't she here?"

It's a question they've asked a lot over the past near decade. The gates are healthy now and there are idiots working on a free standing gate or something and she has a D-3. The digital world cannot be that bad without them when there's no monsters out there in their human world.

He almost wishes he agreed with Yamato-san a little more often, especially to live in the ignorance that their future spawn will likely be the ones taking their place in the battles for the world (and really he struggled to think his parents had worried much before, because they hadn't really understood, and Jun had been a handful on her own and even more besides).

Gods, he actually misses his sister.

"And even if she wasn't," Ken adds. "It'd be worse with all of us over there."

Daisuke can almost imagine it. His dumb leg, Miyako's ruined hands, Iori's back when it's raining… they'd be dead before eighteen and he already knows what Hikari-chan can do when she _thinks_ her brother's dead, he doesn't want to imagine her being _sure_ four people she loves are dead.

Even if he'd come back as like, a weird looking veemon or something. That'd be pretty cool.

"Still annoying."

"Don't worry you get third or fourth crack at whacking the snot out of her," Miyako says, shoving a baby carrot at his nose. "After me, and her brother, though you'll probably have to fist fight Takeru for third spot."

"Speaking from experience," Ken says wryly. "It's not as easy as you think."

Daisuke turns himself around and hugs them both. "I love you guys."

Miyako looks at Ken over his head (he can feel it) and grins. "We love you too, idiot. Now, come on, let's read the rest of this message and get to Iori's. I hear his girlfriend is going to try and sneak him cranberry juice instead of grape juice."

Daisuke's arm twinges but he smiles because yeah, that… sounds hilarious actually. Iori's got zero taste buds, and Daisuke met culinary students who smoke.

* * *

Daisuke thumbs his ID under his palm out of habit because he's not nervous, nope. He does this once a week, every Tuesday that Taichi's in Japan, which is a lot of them because he's still a junior in his department, never mind remaking a familiar one and he only gets trips to America on Mimi's quarters and dimes and he happens to know enough people in other countries who realized, again thanks to Mimi, that Taichi was trying to help mitigate the problem. Otherwise he does it with Meiko, who is very nice actually and often sends him home with handmade signs for festivals.

Of course, when Daisuke had suggested helping out, Yamato had told him to shut up and make more noodles, while Taichi had suggested the same thing, but more political.

_People need to like you more than me, which means you gotta be a better cook than my mom. Sounds like a harder job._

Which… okay fair. He doesn't actually want the politics of the whole thing, he just wants to be useful. Which sounds like something a kid would say, and he knows he should say it and just be honest about it, and no one will mind barring some ribbing that comes from the position, but he still isn't looking forward to it.

So he compromises by visiting Taichi on Tuesdays for lunch, handmade by him, and Taichi returning the favor with gossip and translated politics and whatever Koushiro is doing.

Ninety-nine protocol and security checks later, and more than one person begging for tips on broth, he makes it to the door just barely on time and hears Taichi's low, "it's unlocked." before coming in.

"Someday you're not gonna knock," Taichi says, not looking up from his paper, highlighter tight in his grip.

"Someday you'll be ready for me." He sat on the couch of his senior's office, once again marveling that any of them other than Koushiro has an office that's not in their house.

"I'll never be ready for you. You're too much for one person to handle."

"Don't flirt in the office while I'm in here."

Daisuke nearly drops their lunch at the sight of Meiko sewing, sitting on the other squishy chair. He scans her, thoughtfully, eyes narrowed.

"What?" she shrugs, a far cry from the mousy, broken girl he'd met at the end of the world. "There's no good flirting if I'm in no shape to help."

Daisuke wants to laugh, but it comes out as a weak croak. He sets the food down on the tiny table and gestures with his hands. "You're… uhm…"

Meiko blinks at him. Then she turns to her fiancee (husband? No one's quite sure but he thinks that month out in Okinawa talking to some random family was their equivalent of eloping.) and says, "You didn't tell anyone? Really, Taichi?"

"I knew I'd forgotten something," Taichi says with a foxlike grin and Daisuke throws an eraser at him from his pocket. His senior gasps like he's been punched.

"He's predicting a girl," Meiko says, still hiding a smile behind her glasses. "For his sake I hope he's right."

Daisuke tries to imagine a little Taichi with pigtails running around, or, worse in his opinion, a new Hikari-chan. He's not sure which scares him more.

He thinks of a whole host of things to say, like complain about this being another secret kept by their oh so mighty leader. But his heart isn't in it. He knows how much they've wanted a kid despite being aware of what risks it would be, that Taichi was willing to throw away all they were working for to do it and that they'd been failing since graduation. Messily. And everyone's given them a wide berth because though they are the cheesiest of the couples, they are also the most volatile and Daisuke is pretty sure if any parent decides to passive aggressive her kids Meiko will not hesitate to kill them and Taichi is more than happy to stand there and be attractive about the whole thing so people can't be mad.

"Congratulations," he finally says, because that's the most truthful thing. And because he is terrified of what that baby is going to be when they can walk.

Taichi smiles at him and man that crush from when he was nine is still going strong.

"I am sorry, you know," Taichi says and receives a baffled stare.

Daisuke scratches his head. "For what?"

"We should have looked for you."

Daisuke goes cold.

Because yes he is the optimist of the lot of them, and he's resented them, resented them long and hard even if there was good reasoning behind it. Even with Hikari-chan happy to gallivant off in not growing up and leaving them behind, he's still the one who believes in miracles, in the best of people at their worst and at some point the anger had just not seemed worth it no matter how it simmered. But it hadn't gone _away_.

"We should have," Taichi says. "But we were scared and stupid and I…" He rubs his eyes, not in a crying way, but in the way that turns them red as blood. "Hikari almost died when she was born."

Daisuke flinches because he can't imagine it. She had been sick a lot, but never died, never dead.

"Well, okay no, she's nearly died more times than I have fingers and toes," Taichi continues, wearily and without thought. "And she wanted to go after you. She wanted to do… terrible, awful things to make sure you were okay because that's what life is, that's what it does, that's kinda been how we survived here on earth. That's what it becomes and light is… finicky like that. But I'm her brother. I couldn't let her do that. And Yamato couldn't let Takeru do anything without proof. And I still should have. And you were hurt. She was my responsibility, but so were you lot, and I failed to do that. And I'm so, so sorry." He bows his head, but he's still at his desk so it feels weird.

Daisuke swallows. "It's a little late to… to bring this up Taichi-san."

"No," Taichi says, looking at him with blood red irises still. Daisuke glances at Meiko, who is sipping tea like she's heard this before gods she's gotten terrifying. "Not for me it isn't. And forgiving me isn't something I expect in the cards. But I needed to say it, because things are going too fast for us to keep up."

"Too fast for-"

And then the year hits him. It's 1986. In their world, Jou-san would be born next year. And then Taichi-san and his friends, and…

"We can either not have kids, or…"

Taichi nods. "1995 is coming. And, if we're lucky, Hikari will come with it. But even if not, even if I failed you lot, I'm _not _failing our kids."

And Daisuke, funnily enough, believes him.

"I know you won't, Taichi-san." And there is the miracle, burning in his chest. "And I won't fail yours either."

For a moment, seeing the way the three of them share a look, Daisuke feels all right.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's hurry up and eat. And I can get to planning your baby shower because no one told me Hikari-chan's getting married. I've gotta keep up with this."

Taichi dropped his pen. "She's _what._"

Oops.


	10. Chapter 8

_Warning: discussions of birth and near-death situations, crushes._

* * *

_Chapter Eight - Lilac - 1988_

Miyako has never seen Mimi like this.

Sweaty, pale, sickeningly cold, screaming, there's none of the elegance that she fell in love with. And yet, she has never loved her more. Her senpai was here, giving birth. 'Showing off for the rest of you,' she'd joked at the time and it hadn't seemed funny then. It seemed less funny now.

At least Wallace is here.

_Michael should be here,_ she thinks, not bitter, but worried. He'd said that he'd be here an hour ago. And all they've heard was that some people got rushed to the ICU, or something. Her English even now still wasn't great. But still. She worried. What if?

Then the doors opened and in comes Michael… _bleeding? _She leaped up to him, the seventy-two and counting different basic medical procedures blurring into her brain courtesy of Jou-senpai. She moves as fast as her body could take her, helping him to the nearest bench. "You should be getting that looked at," she says as Sally takes his other side.

"Hi to you too," he wheezes. "It's fine. I got lucky. You should have seen the other guy. How's Mimi?"

"Breaking Wallace's fingers," Miyako says, rubbing her belly. She wishes now that she hadn't told Ken to stay at the hotel. Just because Daisuke is a besotten mess still confronting his feelings didn't mean that they all had to be. And panicking over having a kid to look after, besides.

Michael manages a smile. "Sounds about right."

That is about as far as the conversation got before he gets wrangled away by actual medical professionals to be looked slumps in her seat.

"This is a hassle," she tells her stomach. The baby doesn't kick, though her stomach gurgles, which she takes with something. She's not sure what.

But she misses her mom again, and surely, that counts for something.

Something vibrates in her pocket. She freezes because that was for phones. She doesn't have a phone. Phones that she was used to weren't invented yet. (Not for her lack of trying but it was one of the things she hadn't gotten a hold of for disassembly that would work in America.) There's only one thing that it could be.

Miyako reaches into her pocket and pulls out her D-3. It was still small, mostly static. Heck her D-Terminal had been more responsive than it. This time, however, the Crest of Light pulsed on screen, pink and steady as a heartbeat.

Heart in her mouth, she pressed the first button. "Hikari-chan?" she whispers. Sally sits up straight to look at her, eyes narrowing into slits. But Miyako can't turn away.

A relieved voice filters through a speaker. "Miyako-san," says Hikari and she sounds… not the same, but not younger either. Heavier, worn, exhausted. She doesn't know what she expected. "Finally. I got through to someone. Is this a bad time?"

"Mimi-senpai is giving birth again," Miyako offers. "But I'm stuck out here."

"Oh." The surprise gives way to glee. "I'm so glad for her. I… It's been so long."

"It has." They fall silent and Miyako fidgets.

"I have… I have a lot of things to tell you." Hikari's voice sounds hoarse, like she hasn't spoken in weeks. "But in the spirit of childbirth can I start that I have a son now?"

Miyako wants to shriek, but her mind has gone blank. "With _what_?" she squeaks because now they're older and there is enough time to peruse books and so her brain has gone exactly to where things need to go.

"Not as bad as you might think, but…" She pauses. "I really think both of us can only handle one more time."

Miyako has never felt so much curiosity in her life. "You have to tell me _everything _when you get back."

Hikari breathes through her nose. "I hope you can meet him."

"That's ominous." Miyako says, too dry, too casual. All she can think of is not coming home one day and then never coming home at all, heart in her gut and being digested.

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you." Hikari pauses, a few seconds too long before adding, almost half-heartedly. "No one ever did, usually."

She sounds accepting of this, like it's a fact of life rather than something honestly gut wrenching to hear from your best friend, your jogress partner. But then again, they had been left to die so it might even out somewhere.

Miyako stiffens up and then winces at the pain it brings her. Pregnancy remains a lot of sensations. She swallows and reaches for the nearby water bottle.

"Was that why you left?" She contains the anger welling up in her throat. "Was that why you looked Daisuke-kun in the eye and told him you were happy with the possibility of never seeing any of us again?"

It slips out so no, maybe she's not as okay as she had thought she was.

Hikari doesn't even pause. "Yes. I'm sorry, but _yes_. There are a whole host of reasons for it, some I'm sure my brother has told you, but yes. I tried to tell… most everyone, everything. And no one believed. No one ever bothered to look at me. They looked at onii-chan. And he knew it. I knew it. So we used that to our advantage." There's a rustle of cloth, and a tiny voice making sounds that shouldn't come from a human throat. "Even you didn't see the Dark Ocean until you called for it."

Miyako wants to spit but all the anger drains out so quickly she doesn't see the point. "Hikari-chan that's not fair."

"It's not," Hikari agrees. "Which is why I'm here, trying again. I'm not a blinding sun, I'm a distant star, and really, that's all I can ask for." Another rustling. "And if I didn't, I wouldn't have found what I did."

She stops again and Miyako is about to shake the Digivice over the melodramatics, but then she hears Hikari humming steadily without pause and the noises in the background fade away.

"I found your families, Miyako-san."

Miyako drops her digivice and Sally dives for it in reflexive shock. She nearly drops it when they both hit the floor.

"You… you what?"

Hikari lets out a sound that could have been a laugh or a poor sob. "I found them, Miyako-san. They're alive. They're sleeping, but they're_ alive_."

* * *

Reasonably, Miyako knows that Tachikawa Aiden is Mimi-san's baby and therefore she should be holding him. That said, Mimi is also crying her eyes out after the afterbirth and learning their parents who they thought had been sacrificed actually hadn't been, so she thinks it's okay for now to peer at the freshly cleaned infant.

The few of them who had made it to America were not much better. Ken is leaned into her side and her shoulder is damp from the force of his sobbing that is wrapped in a lot of post-Kaiser guilt. Little Kaito, who is one of the only small children to ever make her worry in a way that's not just maternal hormonal societal ingrained crap, is sucking his thumb in seeming contentment. He's almost three, he just doesn't really get it yet. And honestly, Miyako hopes he never has to. The poor kid barely talks, but he reads books older than her.

Taichi and Meiko have rushed into join them, Michael under his arms and face burnt in humiliation. Tsukiko is blissfully asleep, thank hell, because that is a terror that has Miyako wincing in recollection of Iori's years of being as sweet as a habanero pepper. Thankfully, Iori remembers none of this.

Meiko immediately settles by Mimi and Daisuke looks up from his attempt to smother himself unconscious with a shoddy hospital pillow because of the sheer denial.

A few moments later, Mimi collects herself and looks up at Taichi. Her red rimmed eyes are accusing and fierce and Taichi appears to wilt a little. "You didn't know, did you?"

"I'd have told you if I did," Taichi says, voice hoarse, awful, broken. "I'd have told you and ripped dimensions open myself and dragged them home and beat the dickens out of them."

Mimi manages a snort, wet with snot. They've messaged everyone and gotten very few responses from everyone that isn't Koushiro. Who stayed in Japan. Workaholic.

Miyako looks at her digivice, which has been silent for hours now, and she doesn't know why. Aiden snoozes on and eventually she hands him over to Wallace, who sighs with something weighty and relieved all at once. Sally's against his other shoulder, her D-Terminal hasn't left her hands since they'd gathered in Mimi's hospital room.

"Hikari-chan," she murmurs. "You shouldn't have told us."

"I needed to."

They all jump and Kaito bursts into tears at the upset. But he isn't very loud so Miyako is fine letting Michael handle it in his slightly drugged out state.

"Cripes, Hikari," Taichi grumbles. "Warn a man, would you?"

Hikari doesn't laugh. She merely continues. "You need to know. In case I can't get them out."

The room almost froze over.

"What," Michael says, still stroking Kaito's hair. He's reduced him to hiccups and sniffles now. "Like it's beyond you?"

"It might be," Hikari agrees. "But there's more to it than that. The short version is that the Digital World, our old one and this one, were at best, older Earth type. The digital world is young to us. And we only just ended the war. But we don't have much time before the children who came before us will need to fight."

"Do you know who they are?" Mimi asks.

"No," Hikari says without hesitation. "I have a suspicion on one. But I don't get to see the candidates being picked. I need to find Homeostasis. I think I'm getting close, which is why it's unlikely I'll be able to get them out of where they are. And my husband can't do it either. He's already tried. We've all tried."

"What do you mean 'we'?" Miyako feels a strange twitch coming into her spine.

"Other humans, Miyako-san," Hikari says and Miyako doesn't faint, but she comes pretty damn close.

"There are _humans_ in there?!" Wallace glances at everyone. "Then why aren't they sending their kids?"

"It's not like that, I don't think." Ken speaks for the first time, voice wet. "It's not that we can choose who goes, it's that the children do."

Hikari is silent for a long time. "It's ultimately the choice of the child and the partner what happens to them. We, the parents, can influence that, but they aren't our copies. They aren't extensions of us. They will do things we don't like, and that's all right. I think. It hurts and this is life threatening. And that's why I'll be trying to help in any way I can."

"So that means our families have to wait." Meiko's voice is measured, lilting softly and exhausted from the weight of it. "Or would Koushiro be able to do it?"

"We need the gate open and stable," Hikari replies. Her voice fades out as she murmurs to someone away from the speaker. Then she returns. "Because even if we get them out and wake them up, they'll likely need medical attention."

She's right, Miyako realizes.

"I guess Jou gets to open a hospital," Mimi says with a tired giggle.

They all laugh because that's _exactly_ what Jou doesn't need right now.

"Miyako-san," Hikari murmurs. "I missed you all more than I thought I would."

Miyako sniffles and fails to hide it as a cough. "You could just say _I'm sorry_ like normal people."

"I'm sorry?"

Miyako laughs and she means it. "I missed you too, Hikari-chan."

She means that too, if only because of the lump in her throat, and the suspicion that's reflected in Taichi's now suddenly bright red eyes.

"You can't run away from being an adult forever," Miyako adds, because she can.

Hikari had not mentioned two things: her and Taichi's parents, and the likelihood that she was coming back from all of this alive.

She can almost see Hikari smiling. "Oh no," she says. "I've never tried to run from _that_."

* * *

"She found our families!"

"Ssh!" Miyako and Ken hiss together and Daisuke huffs on the phone, having been taping another show for Mimi to cover her time off. "How?" he says when he's sick of sulking.

They look at each other. "Probably exploring," Ken says cautiously, because they hadn't asked and hadn't considered to. "The world is large. She did say there was a war. It was likely something she found by accident."

"Accident," Daisuke says, wearily. "Right. Uh… I'm gonna need a minute." He hung up and Miyako had to remember not to be offended. This was the eighties. It was expensive.

Still, Miyako lays back and sighs. They're alone in their hotel room and Miyako had hoped to come back and have like, gentle pregnant sex while she broke down because childbirth was _scary _to watch but instead she's curling as much as she can against Ken, who is not settled. He is shifting and squirming at her side, eyes heavy and hollow.

"She loves dumping bombshells on us, huh?"

Ken laughs but there's nothing really in it. "I guess so."

She sighs and looks up at him, cursing that he's gotten taller, broader and healthier. Because he looks so small anyway, like the kid who'd hidden behind some giant Primary Village blocks to sulk and look unhappy because Iori liked throwing his morals in people's faces at nine. "We can do this."

"I know you can."

"Ken," she says in exasperation. He tries to smile. He fails. "What is it?" He looks away and she nudges him with her knee. "Come on, tell me. I'm not Daisuke, I won't laugh."

"He wouldn't laugh either." Ken looks at her with reproach, but he's grinning a little, so he can't really be angry.

"No but he'd be adorable and confused and you don't need it."

Ken sighs. "You two are insufferable." He doesn't shrink away, but moves around her like a purple and grey blanket. Which, okay, she's been running cold lately, but she doubts it has anything to do with that.

They curl there on the bed, listening to the soft classical music that plays from the television, undercutting the low noise of the city life in New York that only pretends to stop.

"What if Osamu is there?'

Oh. Shit. Oh.

Miyako doesn't move, she doesn't think she can because it will snap Ken out of this talkative mood, this open honesty that they've been fighting with him day in and day out to do.

"What if he's rebooted and still eleven?" he continues. "What if he's out in the world without parents and knows nothing except being dead?" Ken laughs. "It scares me, Miyako. I don't know what's worse. I don't know if I can face him yet."

Miyako feels words bubble in her throat, to tell him it'll work out, to tell them that they'll help, that he doesn't have to face this alone-

But Hikari's words come back to her, clear as bells: _I tried to tell… most everyone, everything. And no one believed. No one ever bothered to look at me. _

Perhaps it isn't just that no one had believed her, but that no one cared what she believed.

"You don't have to be," she finally says. "You shouldn't. It was, you were kids, and it was hard and scary and they didn't really get it, and they may not now, and it's… it's okay if you're not ready. I'm not either. I don't think Daisuke's ready. We don't have to be ready."

"We're adults," he says, like that means anything at all. And she laughs.

"Ken," she says. "We fought life or death fights as kids. That's not a good measurement."

He smiles through fresh tears and Miyako smiles back and she leans back on him until the phone rings, and they have to talk through their resident disaster everything else.


	11. Chapter 9

_Warnings: past babies out of wedlock, class differences, alcohol jokes, mentions of spoon theory, a woman gets punched_

* * *

_Chapter Nine - Maize - 1991_

"You passed the bar exam and you're at a bar."

It took Iori a minute too long to make the connection there. "Screw you," he said, not even meaning it. He smacked his head unceremoniously (and more importantly, improperly) onto the bar and waited for the gods to take him. "I have no spoons for this. I am exhausted, Takeru-san, do not."

Takeru laughs, the uncharitable person that he is. "Sorry, sorry." He goes quiet. "Congratulations though, really. I'm glad you were able to achieve your dream."

Iori flushes with joy. "Thank you, Takeru-san." And he is grateful. He wishes things could have been different but he is grateful to Takeru, even now.

Iori doesn't pretend he's not bitter. Because he is. Because they should have been equal, fair, important, not lesser. And that's the feeling that none of them have really managed to get rid of in the whole situation and that's… it just hurts, that's all there is to it.

But it's a years old issue that can't be resolved by anything other than forgiveness, and of the three best suited to forgiveness, one's in the DIgital World and the other two are still working out their issues and Iori can't pretend that he's one of them. Which is really okay. It's just hard.

He loves Takeru as the older brother he's never had, and that makes it so very hard, even though they're all adults, even though they're preparing for the inevitable.

To think as kids they had loved it.

"How's Noriko?"

Takeru asks it softly, reverently, in awe of their patience, their devotion, their refusal to be pulled by anyone else's flow.

How is Noriko, he asks. As if he doesn't know, as if he doesn't visit, as if he's not aware of half the problem.

"Tired," he admits. "Often."

Because Takeru does not have the monopoly on stupid mistakes and Iori doesn't have the monopoly of nobly trying to fix them alone.

"So are you," Takeru points out, gentle and understanding. Then again, of course he's understanding, he doesn't think Iori and Noriko did anything wrong. But then again, they are also staying together and working through their problems. They'd already given up most of their childhoods already.

Perhaps it's just Iori still feels thirteen and screwed up, rather than acknowledging, hey, you're in your thirties this is perfectly gosh darn _normal_.

"It doesn't feel right."

"You married her, Iori-kun," Takeru reminds him gently. "You two swore to do your best by each other."

Iori takes a gentle swig of beer and grimaces at the taste. He doesn't think he'll ever like it. "You're right."

Takeru smiles at him, but neither of them believe the other.

"Come on," he says, and pulls out his wallet. "We're going to find something else to do."

"Such as?"

Takeru shrugs. "Find one of my one night stands on the street and make their day?"

Iori made a face. "Really not funny."

"Funny's for Mimi-san." Takeru chugs his drink, ice included, which is honestly disgusting. "I'm realistic."

"You're supposed to be hopeful."

"Same thing."

Iori wants to dispute that, but he's tired so he settles for slugging his best friend in the arm and following him outside.

* * *

They don't actually go ex hunting, thank god. Instead they visit a park, occupied by children and dogs and a few stray squirrels. Oh and some parents, obviously. Even this late.

One of the kids is playing with a dog. He looks, well, not happy at all if Iori wants to be honest, which is his usual state of being. His hair is dirty and dark and his clothes are patched in places, but he doesn't look upset. A bit too small maybe, but hardly upset.

Iori shuts his eyes, then enjoys the quiet of the park. He'll be joining a firm and slowly getting jobs and providing for his family-

And hoping his children will be too young to fight for their lives when the time comes. Hoping very very much.

_What if Father's in the digital world?"_

It's not the first time he's thought this, but he still has the same mindset of, _and what difference will that make?_

The loss of his father still aches, aches in away that's distant, but not as close as the fear of his grandfather being dead. Or will he have long or how will he be? The list of worries goes on. His mother is stronger and stubborn and levelheaded and had wished often that he had gotten more from his dreamer father other than his sense of justice and loyalty.

And he sometimes wishes he had too. But that would have required more time, which they didn't have.

_I wonder if they'll be proud of me._

He wants to think so.

Iori turns his head to check on Takeru. Sure, Takeru tends to be quiet but he also likes to fill the silence in a way Daisuke doesn't. Steadier, like there's not a lull at all. But he finds his friend staring at the dirty boy playing with the dog. And then past him at the woman on the bench. She looks tired and ready to slump over.

But Takeru has that look in his eyes from when he was eleven and inscrutable and loathing of the darkness itself and he is rising from his seat.

"Takeru," Iori starts but the man was already halfway across the park to the woman. Iori looks between them and the child, and goes to the little boy instead.

He stops at the crunching leaves. The boy's dog, which is really quite small and harmless looking, barks and runs up to sniff him. Iori is happy to let him, as he's always rather liked dogs. They remind him of Daisuke. In a good way. Honest.

"Ty!" the boy says to the dog in a cross little voice that only sounds cute and worn out at the same time. "You were supposed to be fetching."

His vocabulary is rather high, but then he looks about five. Perhaps his parents raise him well and with lots of books.

The boy reaches him, still looking adorably cross. "'M sorry sir," he says. "Ty's a dog who forgets to dog."

"My fiance has a cat who forgets to cat," Iori tells him with a sober frown. "Maybe they can be friends."

The boy brightens. "I dunno if he likes cats!"

"That's a concern," Iori says. "But we can make it workI am sorry I bothered you. My name is Hida Iori. What's your name?"

The boy must have been taught both stranger danger and keep an open mind, because he smiles with yellowed cheeks and gaps in his teeth. "Hirose! Mama named me for my da's da, but she won't talk about him." He runs his hands over his filthy sweater as if to wipe them, even though it's summer in the night it must be warm. "Did yer parents ever do a thing like that?"

"No," Iori tells him and takes a seat. He'll mourn the dirt on his business slacks at another time. "My father died when I was very young, you see, and it was to my family an honorable death, so I had to be aware of him. It's only now that I'm older that I find myself missing him a whole lot more."

And Oikawa, who could have… done something, been a family friend, helped out, something. Before he'd been sad. Now he is kind of angry and hurting and while that iasn't the man's fault, and speaking ill of the dead was wrong, thinking isn't.

"What about your mum?" The boy asks. Perhaps he's at ease because he can see his mother nearby. Iori is afraid to look and see what the two of them are doing.

"My mother is a housewife even now because of the government money, and my grandfather's dojo. He teaches kendo." It's odd to say it in present tense, because it's what he remembers, because it's what had happened and if they are woken up again, it might be what continues, only with his own children. If they survive.

Iori, before the Digital World, had only found the truth in what he could see. And now he has to find the truth in more than that. Sometimes, he realizes, you have to make it for yourself.

"Your mom sounds nice," Hirose says. His voice is solemn. "She made food for you and stuff?"

"And scolded me and helped me with school," he agrees.

"Huh," he says. "Mum tries that, but she's always tired. Maybe that's why she's so mad at that guy." Hirose looks up at him with big blue eyes, a little glassy from hunger. "Is that your friend Iori-san? The man talking to mum?"

Iori had no choice but to acknowledge Takeru now, who had thankfully not decked the woman in the face or something equally as silly. And Iori can't hear what he's saying. His hands are thankfully loose and he looks entirely non-threatening barring his creased forehead and narrowed eyes.

Iori sighs. "Unfortunately."

Hirose frowns, a little. "He has my nose," he says, like this is something you can tell from the ground. Ty nips at his shirt and gets a small pat. "Not now Ty, I'm thinkin'."

"He does have your nose," Iori agrees softly. "And your eyes."

Hirose stands there quietly, a little solemn frown now at his mouth. "Hey, Iori-san,do you think that guy's my dad?"

Iori hums, like he's giving it some thought. "You know, Hirose-kun, I think he might be."

"Huh." Hirose says. Then he looks at Iori. "Do you think he'll like me?"

"Truthfully?" Iori says."I think he's wanted to love you for a while."

"Oh." Hirose picks up a stick, then begins to peel it. "Do you know how to make a sand castle?"

As it turns out, Iori does know how to make a sand castle.

He also knows how to stand up for Takeru, even when his friend is probably in the wrong. (He can't be sure, because even he knows that there are women who do these things on purpose.)

"You could have called," Iori says reasonably, helping Hirose set up a stick in his current sand hill as the adults get closer. "Sent letters, reached out to us. Even email is becoming possible. You did not have to go through this alone. But you did, and that was your mistake."

The woman sputters and Takeru is staring at him like he's grown a second head.

And somehow, and perhaps it's just because Iori knows the look of a cornered person, desperate to escape their own mistakes, he's able to cover Hirose's ears before he can hear her say,

"Well, I didn't want him!"

Or something of that effect. Admittedly, Iori isn't listening.

He cannot stop him from seeing Takeru deck the woman in the face and hearing people gasp about it.

The woman sputters again in outrage.

_I'm not even a lawyer and I'm probably going to have to bail him out of jail, _Iori thinks.

"Did she say something rude?" Hirose asks.

Iori thinks it over. "She said something rude about you."

Hirose blinks at him, then shrugs. "It wouldn't be the first time. Grandma scolds her a lot."

Iori wrinkles his nose. "I see." He watches Takeru and the woman now scream at each other.

"She doesn't mean it," Hirose adds. "She loves me a lot. It's just really hard."

"That's rather the problem," Iori tells him gently. "She doesn't have to mean it."

Hirose nods after a moment and goes back to petting his dog.

Iori is starting to understand how they had become Chosen Children. It's very uncomfortable.

* * *

Iori gets home close to midnight, spit-sober. Takeru is not in jail, rather after a lot of negotiation, a call to Daisuke, and a rumbling dog, they had managed to get him, the ex and the son to go to Takeru's apartment. They'll have to handle that because if Iori's required to be near them for anything other than playdates for the next three months he'll scream.

He barely gets his shoes off before a tiny body flies over to him with all the speed a body can muster. "Papa!"

Iori barely catches her to scold, "Mio, you're supposed to be asleep." His daughter ignores him, firmly wrapped around his waist and not moving for gods or hell.

"She was until you opened the door." Kawada Noriko follows her out of their tiny living room space with a yawn and reaches to hug the two of them together. "Takeru get you drunk?"

"No, we found out he had a son he didn't know about." Iori tries to sound casual, and instead hugs Mio a bit too hard. She squirms against him and he apologetically lets go, moving to pick her up instead.

Noriko looks at him thoughtfully and then answers, "Okay so he still didn't get you drunk. After all that."

Iori can't help it. He laughs.

"How do you always know what to say?" he asks her in genuine awe.

Noriko shrugs. "Practice figuring it out I suppose. You always seem to know what to do."

That's a lie, he knows, but he wants to believe her.

He looks at Mio. "Want to watch some cartoons?"

His daughter cheers and for a moment, Iori actually feels like he can raise a good child.

He just, even now, has no idea if he can raise a _Chosen Child._


	12. Chapter 10

_Warnings: Three Part Arc of the story, violence, suffering children. It's 1995 everybody._

* * *

_Chapter Ten - Lavender (1995)_

It's a spring night, in the year 1995 and everything in Hikarigaoka is filled with explosions and broken bridges.

For Ken, it's been a very long night.

He'd been off duty for a grand total of twenty minutes. Maybe. It's still too late for children to be outside. And yet he finds one, a little boy, maybe six at best, with blue hair and big eyes and pajamas and screaming about his sister to anyone who will listen.

And suddenly Ken remembers what year it is and almost curses. Almost, because he's better than Daisuke at children and rude language. He flags the boy down and as the child turns he almost flinches because it's _like looking at Osamu_ for a solid ten seconds after he'd skinned his knee and before his parents and the neighbors forgot he was a person before a brain. He shakes himself free of these thoughts.

"It's okay, I'm a police officer, I can help you. What's your name?" It sounds fake even to him, but it's the truth. Ken, may some higher power help him, would _make it true._

The little boy continues to look at him with suspicion, but then his shoulders slump. He shifts in his bare feet, that are starting to go pale with cold. Ken resolves to pick him up as soon as he's heard the explanation he already suspects. "'M Dougal. My, my little sister, we're twins-"

_Twang._

"An' she found an egg in front of daddy's computer she said and it hatched and turned into this big cat-"

_Twang._

"-And she was scared to leave him by himself. He sounded sad!" The little boy pauses as if he can't even believe what he just said. "So when he got bigger, he jumped and she… she…"

Ken can imagine the rest, a small child, holding onto a giant monster, the two of them falling from the sky and crushing a car or two before racing off into the night. "She went with," he says.

Little Dougal nods. "She's so stupid…"

"Your sister's very caring," Ken corrects gently. "It's a good thing." His mind is racing. What if she's going to be a chosen child? What if they _both _are? This seems like how it started, but weren't they sure it was supposed to be their kids?

Well, Ken would be happy if it wasn't, in all honesty. Except these are _tiny._

Before either of them can speak again, there is a flash of yellow, hot light flying down the street. Ken doesn't think. He grabs the kid and throws them both as far sideways as he can. He thinks he hears a crunch and stars dance behind Ken's eyes in unison with pain. And he knows. He knows what that is. He could never forget.

_Chimaeramon, _he thinks with terror, sick and mixing with the image seared behind his eyes of Wormmon falling like a branch in the road. Oh god how were they going to fight that? How could anyone-

The little boy whimpers, as if he's figured it out too. "She's okay," he tells the child, for lack of anything else to say.

Dougal suddenly squirms in his arms and points. "Purple! There!"

Ken tilts his head and opens his eyes. Indeed there is a tiny blob - child, if he squints a bit - of purple, with two slightly bigger redheads knelt beside them. Great, he thought, more potential injured.

"Hold on tight," he tells Dougal and only when the fingers do what he told them to (and there was another earth shaking rush of heat, filling his nose with the smell of crystallized sand) does Ken move forward towards the small, huddled group of kids.

(So focused, he misses the little boy with orange hair and empty, empty red eyes, standing in the alley, watching it all. But he remembers this later.)

"Are you all right?" he greets in his best child-friendly voice that isn't for Dai. Dai doesn't need to be child-friendly, Daiki, like his father, needs to be flipped by his ankle a couple of times and Ken is the only one who can, never mind the way his sister chases him about the house. He wonders for Miyako sometimes.

Both children, also twins he realizes in the shapes of their noses and the same striking blues of their eyes, look at him and nod. They step back for the clear authority figure he is (and that is still so very surreal) and let him see the little girl crouched over-

"Osamu," he breathes, incredulous.

The boy opens his eyes, incredulity filling his face and he coughs, "Ken?" Issat you?"

* * *

Osamu wishes that he could say that this was all a happy accident, that there was no such thing as destiny, that he was just lucky to be staring at the mid-twenties to early thirties face of his little brother.

But Osamu has always been observant. In the first life that only comes in flashes of misery and light and pride and crumpling beneath the weight of hands on his shoulders, he remembers being painfully observant and aware and knowing too much and thinking to himself -

Well everyone's happy so it's fine isn't it? -

Except no, everyone had not been happy. Ken had been miserable and his parents proud but there was no happiness in there, not really. He hadn't been happy or satisfied, just small and smart and an idiot.

The truck, his brother's anger so close to surface, the escape, the whining of the siren fading fading fading -

When he'd remembered that at age five here, he'd about lost his mind again.

But in this time he had not had parents swayed by glory and pride, he now had folks layered with caution, like they were afraid to let go of him, like if they let go they would never see him again, rather if he let go he would never want to. They were strange folks, but Osamu, two lives in and twice as cynical (he tried with his parents he really did but innocence and naivety was _hard_ when you remembered giving it up) loved them as much as he'd loved the family from before.

He hadn't had to try to be smart so he didn't make himself but that didn't mean Osamu didn't pay attention. Things were older than the life he remembered. He hadn't been a fan of fiction, but Ken had been, so he'd ended up reading it to him. The result had become relaxing and familiar until the computer incident of course that neither of them had apologized for.

Had been _able_ to apologize for.

Which was why he was not surprised overmuch that his late night wanderings (It was inevitable with a genius mathematician with no sense of time for a father and a very hands on education minded mother, he ended up wandering at night, still cursed with insomnia one life later) and caught up in a madness of strange giant monsters.

Like Ken had tried to tell him back then that he hadn't believed. And now it was true and he'd been knocked over by a gust of hot wind and shielded by a girl that could be his brother in age. And well, his seniors.

He had not expected to see his brother's adult face looking at him with horror and fear and confusion and all sorts of shit. Crap. He was still like seven. No cursing in front of the actual babies.

"Ken?" He repeats.

"Oh gods," his brother says. And then, like water freezing over, Osamu watches Ken's face smooth into something… professional? Adult? Something Osamu has never experienced. And it… hurts a little. He turns to Takumi-senpai, who is always sweet and friendly and warm. Though both of them are, Takumi goes out of his way to be.

"Are all of you all right?" he asks and Osamu notices the boy still attached to his chest starting to wiggle loose and drop neatly onto his hands and feet to confront the girl that had been shielding him with her tiny body.

She's also ignoring her brother and staring at the source of the wind.

"Osamu-kun just fell, that's all." The boy looks around. "Our brother had wanted something from the store even though it's late. So we'd taken him... "

"He listened when we told him to hide," says Ami. Her voice is a bit higher, but a bit more hoarse. She doesn't seem to be fond of talking. "He's farther away. This girl fell off the giant lion and we've been trying to keep her here ever sin-"

As she speaks, the little girl darts off like a shot away from her brother's furious hands and runs forward, racing with all her tiny might towards-

"And there she goes," Ami finishes. Her voice has this strange airy quality, like what they're seeing isn't quite so terrible when she says that.

That's how she is, Osamu knows. She's trying to help and judging by the milky shade of white of Ken's face, she's not helping.

* * *

Chimaeramon is there, like he'd thought. Only there's no Magnamon and instead a great, heaving lion stands there behind it. Its mane starts to whirl, spinning and groaning with electricity and for a moment Ken wonders if he's seen this before.

Then he throws himself over the group of kids, effectively stopping Dougal from chasing after her lone form.

Only Ken can see the shine of light wrapping around her skin, hear the steady _bathump_ of the world coming into focus. He knows, with the same certainty he'd known from looking at Alphamon years and years ago and knowing that they were nothing in the face of that, that she had caused this evolution.

And she was about to do it again.

The light of the world explodes and one of the twins wriggles free, Ken has firmly planted his arm on Dougal's back so he can't try and do something reckless and stupid, so he isn't prepared for the power of two actually older children breaking free and going to help, going to care. And a part of him is absolutely certain of what will happen next, as sure as he can be about anything. The rest of him feels ready to throw up as a giant silver paw reaches out and slaps down Chimaeramon from the sky like a very irritating bird.

The ground _quakes_ at the weight and the concrete crumbles beneath it. Chimaeramon jerks and twists and snarls through broken teeth. And from the light comes the body of a twelve-eyed giant tiger with red orb after red orb spinning around it. It is beautiful, majestic, terrifying.

So much.

Too much.

Ken's head _splits open_ and suddenly he remembers a boy with brown hair and blue eyes and his arms loosen-

But not enough for his fingers to not catch Dougal by his shirt. The boy flails and screams but they're too far away to see his sister anymore. But somehow he knows that she's sitting by the tiger's paw as it steadily grows to dwarf buildings and trees alike. She is unafraid, he's certain of that. And the monster - the monster Ken had made once, breaks free, and lunges.

Ken sees the other two children get close just as a wave of silver light pours from the tiger's maw and once again, consumes their eyes, the eyes of everyone watching, even the screams and sounds of pain.

But when it fades, human and Digimon alike have disappeared.

"Sayo?"

The little boy's timid voice hurts to hear, but it galvanized Ken into action all over again.

His digivice, the thing he always carries, even though it hurts him, even though it rarely turns on, glows softly in his hand.

"Wormmon," he says softly. It's silent for a moment.

Then the familiar, warbling, but gentle, always gentle voice answers, "Yes, Ken-chan?"

"Can you help me? A few kids have disappeared into the digital world."

"Of course, Ken-chan." There's something different about the voice, he's sure, but he can't put to words what it is. "I'll contact the queen and let her know. She's already moving about looking for lost things and people, it'll help her to know what happened. What did happen?"

Wormmon sounds older, smoother, with something else to it. Maybe they evolved again, into something different, someone new.

Ken swallows. "It's uhm… it's 1995, and digimon have broken through the barrier."

"Oh." Wormmon lets out a strange sort of sigh. "Well, that explains a lot. I'll tell the queen to contact you then. She's been busy and it's been dangerous. But yes, definitely. V-mon and I will start looking in the meantime. Keep in mind that time passes differently here, so we may find them before you can send out a missing person's report."

"Time is distorted there again?" He has no idea who the queen is but if he's right, if he's right he's going to be so smug.

Wormmon lets out another exhausted sound. "It's always distorted now, Ken-chan. We're supposed to figure out why. But it's difficult. This will be a good divergence. Just uhm… contact us with a way point okay?"

"Of course," Ken says. Koushiro can help with that. Probably.

Wormmon pauses. "I love you, Ken-chan. It sounds like you've grown up."

"I love you too, Wormmon." And he does gods he does. "It sounds like you did too."

Wormmon laughs and Ken likes it and it hurts. "Right then. I'll see you soon." And his Digivice goes silent.

Ken feels light in his chest for a moment. Then he sighs and returns to reality.

"Can you stand, Nii-san?" he finally asks because what else does he say? He's still holding Dougal who has progressed straight into a silent meltdown and honestly Ken cannot blame him.

"I'm hardly your older brother anymore," the boy says, which is true but it still hurts. Still, Ken watches his brother, the same age Ken had been when Osamu had _died_, pick himself up, test his legs, then nod. "Yeah," he says with the stubbornness of a child. "I think I'm all right."

Ken decides to take him at his word. "Well," he says. "Do you think you'll be in trouble if you come with me home and your parents pick you up from there? I need to get this one's parents on the line and we're not far from my house."

Osamu bites his lip and Ken prays he can just treat his brother like he's another lost child because if not they're both doomed. Then he nods. "I can help you find them in the phone book."

Oh that helps. Ken turns to explain to Dougal, who just stares at him, numb and teary-eyed and puffy.

As he does, a soft, somewhat strange voice speaks up. "Pardon me?"

Ken is terrified to know what the rest of the night is going to hold as he turns to look at another small child roughly Osamu's age, who bears no resemblance to the twins at all yet has to be their missing little brother.

The boy's expression slants upward, uncomfortable and seeming somewhat plastic, as he speaks, "I'm sorry for bothering you, however that was my brother and sister who went missing just now. Could I also call my parents? They're going to worry."

"You don't have to be so formal with him, Koh," Osamu says, not in a derisive way, just matter of fact.

Koh shakes his head. "I must be strong," he says in this strange, matter-of-fact, and now that Ken listens, exhausted sort of way.

Ken, however, cannot be exhausted. He must be an adult. "That's fine," he says, and means it.

This is going to be a long, long night.


	13. Chapter 11

_Warnings: separated parents, injured children, robots, plot_

* * *

Chapter Eleven - Gold - 1995

Takaishi Takeru does not like all nighters.

His wife is a night owl and works from home coding so no one knows she's a woman but generally he hates all nighters and the fact that he is currently up past _midnight _when he goes to bed at eight-thirty (which upsets Hirose to no end because they still don't get much time together because his birth mom is still a cross witch) is spelling a bad morning for him in a few short hours.

Still. When Ichijouji Ken calls you at two in the morning about Digimon, you get up. You grab bad convenience store coffee, and you _go go go_.

Your wife follows you into the car, Hirose intact and mumbling dismay but it doesn't matter. This is the digital world and you have to go.

So Takeru goes to Ken's house, the safest place to go, and barrels right in to see-

Well, if he's honest, for a moment, Takeru thinks he's looking at the Digimon Kaiser. Much smaller, thank goodness, but the same spiky hair and eyes framed by glasses, a firm frown of dislike and discomfort.

But then the rest of him catches up to see Ken quietly talking to a boy with blue hair (and that there's one with orange hair sleeping on the kid's leg kind of kills the image that could have been).

"Who're you," he asks with all the mistrust Takeru thinks he probably deserves.

Still he smiles because tired or not he doesn't want to show off rudeness to Hirose who has just mastered not picking at his clothes. "Takaishi Takeru. And you are?"

"... Osamu," he replied and Takeru has to keep his heart down in his chest and not his throw. "Izumi Osamu."

Takeru almost backpedals out the door, but Hirose is already inside and shyly peering over the crib at baby Daigo (he doesn't want to know where that came from, nope, not him, it has to be a coincidence, has to be just to help Taichi-san, because there's no way the others _know_ for sure.) Therefore he is a strong, brave parent and joins the room. "Nice to meet you, Osamu-kun. Are your parents here?"

"They should be soon." His voice sounds wary.

"Be nice, Osamu, he's a friend of mine." Ken doesn't look up from his conversation to see Osamu's ears turn as red as cherries.

"You're not my dad."

"I'm old enough to be."

"Don't remind me." There is a fond curl on Ken's lips, one that signifies he is actually Not Okay. But Takeru doesn't say so, lets him finish talking to the small boy and pointing him to the phone before approaching. Ken is a bit like a cat, Takeru reasons, much like Hikari is. You have to wait for those two to be willing to approach, to be open and affectionate.

Unless you're Daisuke, because Daisuke is immune to all forms of claws. Except emotional ones.

"Takeru," Ken greets with that smile of his. It's suspiciously Daisuke and Miyako free at home but he thinks they either had a fight or are on errands. (These three don't fight often, not seriously. They disagree in private.) "Sorry no one else's here yet. Miyako is in the shower and Daisuke's getting food."

"They can take their time," Takeru replies, trying to smile back. He's too tired. "So what happened?"

Ken picks up and chugs some tea the way Takeru had once downed shots. "Chimaeramon did."

Takeru's eyes widen because _holy shit_ was there still a street.

The man looks placid until you see glittering amethyst eyes. "Took… took that little boy's sister and a the orange one's siblings. I don't think it was on purpose, but they're now lost there by themselves. And… I got home and checked in with my station to let them know, has your ex called you yet?"

"She never calls me on days I have Hirose." It's stupid petty and he can't understand why (no he can, he just hates it). "Why?"

"She called the station saying you kidnapped her kids and were on the run. Which, I told them after I called you that the likelihood of that was slim to none because your girlfriend picked up the phone first and told them you were dead to the world three hours ago and Hirose was just as asleep." He pauses to breathe. "They claim they'll be sending an officer who is not me over here because I promised to check that you didn't have, and I quote "alien tech which you're using to eat her children's brains."

For a moment, a blissfully short, awful moment, Takeru sees so much red. Not like seeing the Kaiser. Not like seeing the faraway images of his family's hands. But the red of seeing Devimon in that black hole.

Then he slumps into the chair in defeat. "I've never even _seen _her twins. She won't even let me come to their apartment, treat them to lunch, something." They definitely aren't his. They're her other ex that got hit by a truck a couple of years back. Nasty accident and he'd scarpered after that, the prick.

Ken looks at him with that near sympathy. "You'd just mooch off Daisuke's ramen anyway."

"So?" It's the principle of the thing and Takeru knows Ken knows that. "Is she going to get in trouble for this?"

"Probably." Ken's sympathy doesn't change. "Anyway, according to her Kaoru disappeared from her house in a flash of light, much like the kids in Hikarigaoka."

Hikarigaoka. All of his self-loathing flies out the window as it occurs to him what year it is on the calendar. "Shit."

Ken nods. "The others are probably going to tell us to go to Koushiro-san's lab. But I wanted to at least get you up to speed in case of… complications."

"We've got a minimum of three children in the Digital World with no understanding of anything. And one of them is what, five?" Takeru almost laughs. "This is a disaster."

"It's only two," Ken reminds him. "We have time for it to get worse."

"... Thanks Ken. You really know how to lighten the mood."

"I try."

They sit in silence, watching the children. Hirose gives up on whatever he's trying to do, which often doesn't make sense to Takeru but he figures the kid will try to explain it later and he loves that kind of bonding.

"Is that your brother?" Takeru asks, watching Osamu gently shove the blue haired child onto a cushion.

Ken doesn't answer immediately. "Yeah," he finally says. "He remembers. I grilled him all the way back here and that was a lot of embarrassing crap I did not want to remember."

Yamato has done the same to _every single one _of Takeru's girlfriends so he shudders in mutual understanding. "I apologize for your ego."

"It's fine, it takes a beating from Miyako every day as I watch her jerry rig a toaster into… well, trust me, the kids are never bored."

"I believe it." They go quiet. "Are we just waiting for Daisuke then?"

"He's the only one who can drive at 2 am and I'm probably not safe."

Takeru, who realizes belatedly that he might be going into shock, understands. "Right. Well, I'll drive you and a couple of your kiddos and we'll get to Koushiro's when he gets back. Did you-"

"Contact them? Yes." Ken looks at him almost witheringly. "Ex-boy genius, remember?"

"Fair."

* * *

They arrive to Koushiro's… lab, technically, but it's at the basement of his chosen university. No one knows how he got in without using his dead name but then nobody asks because no one knows what it is.

Before they enter, Takeru gives Ken a nudge. "Does your brother's last name have the same kanji?"

Ken pauses, then pales. "Shit."

As if today cannot possibly get any weirder. "This is going to suck," Takeru says out of earshot of his son, who now knows one of his sisters is missing, but is certainly being weirdly quiet about it.

Takeru really doesn't want to fight custody with his ex. He really doesn't. There's something horrible and sexist about it but she's just proving to be absolutely terrible and not willing to let him help.

They meet Koushiro downstairs with what looks like his third coffee refill.

"The portal's been flickering," he tells them with an almost manic glee. "Someone's trying to open a portal on the other side." Then he sobers. "So, tell me everything."

Ken does and Takeru and Daisuke herd the kids into the "playroom" because Koushiro is prepared for anything and they just need to get him a building before something happens.

"Koh!" shouts a voice and one of Koushiro's coworkers flies from the computer and grabs the orange boy by the shoulder. "What are you doing here? You should be at home!"

The boy blinks at who is possibly his mother, baffled. "You didn't come home. Keren got hungry. We went to get food when she woke up. Nee and Nii are gone now."

Takeru's stomach curls as the woman replies, in a distantly off sort of voice. "I knew we forgot something…"

There was no malice behind it but it makes him think of dad and that's definitely not pretty.

"It's okay I called her. Mister Yagami will get her." Koh sounds perfectly non-plussed, much like Hirose had tried to with him for months. And it makes him want to hurl a glass item at this woman's head. He glances at Koushiro, who looks a mixture of reproachful and exasperated.

"This is why I told you to go home Matsumi," he says in that mild way that means he's disappointed.

It's probably not the right time to mention Osamu, is it?

Then a light flickers on the other side of the room. The concern is quickly forgotten as the light flickers and dies from a machine that dwarfs them and nearly scrapes the high ceiling.

Not for the first time, Takeru thinks Koushiro is the scariest one of them all. The fact that he had funding for this is terrifying.

The others trickle in slowly. He goes to his brother and Sora first (he wants to call her his sister so, _so _badly, but he is legitimately terrified his brother will just dissolve into space dust at the sound of it). Jou is there next, yawning, but his son looks so dang happy to be able to tinker with a calculator that he's left alone. Taichi and Meiko barrel in together, Taichi chatting furiously on the phone. Iori carries his daughter on his back. She's in tears. Noriko downs an entire apple juice before his eyes.

Takeru has never wanted a drink so badly in his life. "What happened?"

Meiko whips around, waving the group over. "The digital world took Kaito from Mimi-san's lap."

Takeru suddenly understands the universe, his parents' rage, everything. He understands it all so very much.

* * *

Time passes.

It doesn't feel like it does, but eventually all the children are asleep as they should be. Mimi is no longer on the call because they're trying to get her to Japan with Wallace as soon as possible. Jou is carefully preparing supplies like he's about to perform emergency surgery. Which could happen. Takeru is now old enough to realize it could happen. That it should have happened and he doesn't know how they escaped it.

He doesn't shake but he doesn't feel eight years old anymore. He doesn't feel like the child who watched Patamon die. But surely that child still exists.

Why would Hikari go willingly back into that world of life and death?

He wishes she was here to ask.

Their digivices all chime in unison. It's a steady, rhythmic pulse of sound and light, gently glowing, shining with the same colorless light.

"The machine's running without us," Matsumi says to Koushiro, who is beside her in a single breath. "The data processing is way too high for our machines, it likely won't survive this attempt."

"That's honestly the least of our problems at the moment," Koushiro tells her. "Go with the children. You don't have any protection."

"And you do?" asks Mie's husband in a withering voice.

Koushiro simply lifts his digivice and shoos them out.

That's not the reason but Takeru can tell none of them want to correct him. This is theirs. This belongs to them first.

And maybe he's not that innocent eight year old boy anymore, but Takeru still feels the tug, the love, of the world on the other side of the sparking light that's flickering again. Except it took his family. that's a problem.

The first pulse is ugly and messy, spitting out a single family, curled around a blankly staring child. His hand is outstretched towards empty air.

Taichi and Yamato look at each other. Then they haul themselves to their feet and begin speaking to the person on the top, gently untangling them and taking them to Jou. Without quite meaning to, Takeru sets himself up on the other side to help when he can.

The second pulse is practically scrap metal with hair by the first look of it. Takeru sees hollow eye sockets framed with metal and covered in some clear liquid, eyes the color of dried blood staring emptily at him in particular. He's going to have nightmares in the morning.

"What is that?" Mie asks in horror.

Koushiro is moving closer and something wraps around his ankle, fully prepared to drag him to the floor. Then it twitches and falls still.

"It's a girl," he says once he's jerked free, surprisingly calm. "A girl… robot I believe."

"Is that even legal?" Sora can't help but ask.

Koushiro, for some reason, glances at the children's room. "Not that I'm aware of, no."

They expect more, they expect worse, but it goes so quiet for so long barring the ragged breathing of the three people thrown in and the rapid typing and scanning of the fourth that it almost feels peaceful.

Takeru feels sick. Does Hikari know? Does she know about any of this?

Then, finally, as the college above them starts slowly creaking to life, the ground quavers. The portal device shudders and flickers and goes out, snapping them all from cautious dozing.

Then it explodes with blue light and Takeru's digivice vibrates angrily against his thigh. He lifts it up, he doesn't know why but he thinks, he feels like he has to somehow.

Ken, Daisuke, Miyako and Iori all look at each other, then at him. Then Daisuke nods slowly with a small smile playing at his lips.

"Miyako, for old times sake?"

It feels like the wrong moment but there may never be a right moment ever again. It feels like farewell and hello and all sorts at once.

If he's honest, it kind of feels like destiny.

Miyako grins, cracks her knuckles. "Chosen Children, let's roll! Gate, open!"

Their D-3s crackle and the blue light solidifies like a brilliant flame. The robot on the floor twitches and jerks to life again, struggling hard against nothing.

Then multiple people crash into the open space in the room. One makes Takeru's eyes flit to his fellow young chosen and all of them look about ready to vomit. Black and golden armor and brilliant red eyes higher than the pillars take to one knee as they land, holding out a hand to grab purple clawed fingers, also that tall and with horns on its head and armored in white. Blood hits the floor from the side with a splat. The second creature shudders a moment then rights themselves, grumbling all of the while.

The red eyes scanned the room before they settle on Daisuke. "You shoulda seen the other guy, mate," he says with teeth shining in the light.

Daisuke blinks. "_V-mon?"_

"Aye, in the flesh." He waves a clawed hand. "Probably oughta have devolved before we came through, aye?"

"Probably," agreed the alphamon, dear gods. "We were in a hurry. Speaking of…" A golden light briefly eclipses the blue and the digimon shrinks into a woman with blond hair and the skimpiest clothes Takeru has ever seen in real life. "Much better."

"Oh did yeh have to turn hot, mate?" V-mon - _V-mon - _complains. "Now Ken will never recognize you."

"Wormmon?" Ken blurts out and Takeru almost wishes he was jealous.

The woman smiles with delight. "It has been a long time, Ken-chan. Now I'd stay where you are."

The portal ripples once, twice, three times. Then it spits out a man with a terribly large hole in his stomach, a little girl with purple hair, five vaguely aged children, Hikari and Tailmon.

It has to be Hikari because her hair is spiked short and her red eyes are familiar in every sense of the word as she meets his eyes them. She croaks. "Need a little help here if you all don't mind!"


	14. Chapter 12

_Notes: Murder, children, selfish ideas, gods, child soldiers_

* * *

Chapter Twelve - Pink - 1995

She owes them so many, many explanations.

Her friends, her family, surprisingly not her kids as much because unlike most people, she kept her kids up to date because they lived in a world where intentional misinformation towards children meant death in the near future. And also Bagramon had taken the option from her (yes she is still, still mad about that), these new children, so many, many people.

But there's not much time left and she hates it.

Hikari pushes her weary legs to rise as someone stumbles over to her - it's so hard to see, her eyes are burning. She stumbles and familiar arms catch her. THey're stronger now, years of picking up children, she assumes.

"Hikari-chan," Daisuke mumbles, a voice choked with shock and horror. "You're here…"

"Who else?" she manages to say, grinning into his shoulder. "Feel how buff I am now?"

He laughs and it sounds painful. "What's going on?"

Does she have to tell him? She wants to sleep. She wants to roll over and sleep and wait for this to be over. But she cannot. There are still children out there. "War," she finally says wearily. "Such a long, long war. We've… we've got to finish it now. Tailmon?"

"I'm in good condition, Hikari," replies her partner at once. "I can bring back multiple passengers."

Hikari smiles, pushes herself to her feet and slaps her face. "Right. All right. There's no time to lose. The direction is clear." She steps back from Daisuke and turns to Fafnir and the woman who was once Wormmon. She'll have to take a name now. "Kyoko, Fafnir, I'm leaving the explanations to you."

"But of course," 'Kyoko tells her without missing a beat. "You can count on us, your majesty."

"Always can, m'lady," Fafnir agrees. "We'll take care of the rascals and the healing. Get the rest home."

"I will," she promises. She looks Daisuke in the eyes, meets his gaze steadily. "When I get back, when we get back," she says firmly. "I promise I will explain everything I know and understand. Okay?"

She doesn't look at her brother, who has taken in a sharp breath, a knowing exhale as he keeps working with Jou. She knows his hands haven't paused in minutes.

Hikari doesn't look at Takeru. She doesn't have to. She cannot tell her brother yet either. He deserves the privacy of it. She moves slowly, on shaky legs, to her youngest children. They're still resting and she won't wake them, but she pauses to hug them anyway.

Just in case.

She stops at the tiny purple girl wrapped around her father's arm. Mirei shivers at her eyes. Hikari winces, but kneels to squeeze her wrist.

"It will be alright if you falter," she tells her. The big eyes grow even rounder as Hikari stands up again.

Once again, just in case.

* * *

The Digital World is a broken, battered mess now. All Hikari can see are ruins and pieces of things, eggs scattered everywhere, gaps where lakes and land used to be.

"The Dark Masters are really dead," Holydramon muses as she flies Hikari over. The charred remains of a garden stick out to her, the tiniest, almost useless plot of land, charred black with a single purple bandanna flying in tatters on its signpost. Hikari flinches at the sight of it and looks at Holydramon's giant head. "We'd have at least been shot by now otherwise."

"And Apocalymon is sealed," Hikari agrees. "I saw to that myself. So all that remains now is…"

"The Chosen Ones." Holydramon grunts. "And their enemy."

Hikari swallows, then grips her digivice. "Be ready, Talia. We don't have Astrid here to help us now."

"I got this far without that stupid bat around, I can do the rest without her."

Hikari would have laughed, except she hears a terrible scream.

A very familiar scream for help.

Holydramon drops, leaving Hikari clinging on for dear life. A little boy howls as only a desperate one can, crouched over the shade of a remaining tree. Hikari jumps down the rest of the way and ignores the stinging in her legs. She runs and meets wild blue eyes that fill briefly with fright and then relief.

"Auntie Hikari…?"

She was still not used to hearing that but she gingerly wrapped her arms around the boy anyway. "Yuhi," she murmured. "Good job staying safe. Who is this with you?"

As she looks down at the form breathing harshly in the dirt, Yuhi hiccups. "Riki. It's Riki. He tripped when we were running. I… I thought I could put him in the lake, but… but it's dried up now. What are we gonna _do?_"

Hikari does not stop. She does not falter. She does not hesitate. She picks him up into another hug and reaches for Riki in the next breath. "Open," she murmurs and the air ripples. "I'm going to send you both somewhere safe. Tell the man with blue hair and glasses what hurt Riki and he'll help you from there to get him and you proper care. I have to keep looking for survivors. Your brother is there. It will be all right. Okay?"

Yuhi sniffles. "Okay."

She waits until they're both gone. Then she slumps and stifles a whimper into her arm. Holydramon wraps around her like a giant furry blanket and lets her cry.

How many people died for her selfish dream? How many of her people are still alive? How could she cause this?

But then… that is what happened before isn't it? Just back then, she'd forced herself to see it and accept it.

That is so much harder now.

Hikari drifts into an uneasy sleep, waking at the sound of stomping feet. Tailmon is in her arms, curled there in false ease. She doesn't lift her head, evens out her breath, until-

"Hikari?" The familiar raspy, gentle voice booms out from the vocal cords of such a large creature.

Agumon - no, Dinorexmon now, she supposes - "Hector," she says with relief. "What are you doing here?"

The great dragon, whose head is so high it's a miracle he can even see her, smiles without her seeing it. "Looking for you. Your husband's been worrying over you for days, you know. There are things he needs you to do, he says."

Hikari pushes herself up, wincing at the stiffness in her body. "Worrying over me?"

"He's made me skip meals!" complains her brother's partner. "I had to hurry and find you. Thought you were dead but I knew better."

"You always know better," Hikari tells him because it's true. Agumon is the smartest digimon she knows. "What's the hurry?"

Dinorexmon lets out a bone weary sigh. "He's dying, Hikari."

The world does not drop out from under her, but it's very close indeed.

"Take me to him," she demands.

* * *

The throne room is dim when she bursts in, and she is out of order. Her clothes are tatters and she stinks of blood, sweat and snot. There are holes in the walls and roof.

And yet her husband, her Abraham, Bagramon the fallen angel of the goddess, smiles at her from the throne as always, like she has lit up his world just by being in it. Sometimes, often, she wonders if she's done enough to love him.

She wonders all the more with the rot sticking out of his chest.

"You just had to go and fight, didn't you?" she says as she crosses the room, hands aglow, fury and worry fighting in her because if they don't she'll cry again. "What happened?"

"Well, love I can't just let you go off and fight with just Talia by your side."

"Actually that's kind of the point," Tailmon informs him, racing towards another door. "I'll go get eyes on the remaining children and ready the portal. Don't take too long, Hikari."

"I won't," Hikari promises. She reaches the throne, hands shining brighter. "I don't think I will manage much."

"You will do enough," Abraham tells her, ever gently. "Have you seen Joseph?"

"No, Hector brought me here, before going to eat then find the rest of the old crowd that's here." She sets to work, running her fingers delicately over the rotting dark flesh and trembling arm. "Do I need to tend to him?"

"Mm… I believe he has gone into rest. It would be better not to disturb him."

Hikari regards her husband with disquiet. "What are you keeping from me?" What will you be keeping from Takeru?

Abraham coughs, his soft smile sharpening. "Aye, the children… they are in the Dark Area."

Hikari winces and yet she knows he is still hiding things. He is a terrible liar. "That is… difficult. I can get them out." Knowing Hiro, her son has been marking a path through it in case she can't. He's a stubborn lad.

"There were strange creatures in that place. It ate… so many, _so many_ of our friends… And there were no eggs left behind."

Hikari stiffens. "None?"

"None," he confirms. "The little lass you brought started crying. Poor thing. Kernel laughed at her."

Hikari frowns. "Where is Kernel?"

"With the mother earth." There's something ugly in his words and Hikari's eyes narrow.

"I see." Her body feels cold. Her heart is angry.

"You'll have to take her with you, you know," Abraham tells her gently. "In place of me."

"I'm not fond of leaving you here either," she replies, reaching for her remaining bandages.

He grunts. "You must look after the children. I may yet survive, if I hibernate and seal the castle with myself and Joseph in it. Luthander made certain that safety would be adhered to, so long as one of us four remained. And Luthander is dead, Artemis has crossed the sea to the island with the future little things and I will be sleeping here, so all must be well."

Hikari finishes tying him shut. "It's been a long time since I heard you sound optimistic."

"You have supported me without pause, Hikari." He reaches out and strokes her cheek with his good hand. "The least I can do is send you to your home with a smile, and seal your hopes and dreams away to be saved."

Hikari doesn't mean to laugh, but she can't help it. She laughs until it hurts. "I suppose so. This is your way. You refuse to open up until the crucial moment."

"Sounds familiar, does it not?"

She kisses the stubble on his chin. "I suppose it does, yes." She rises from her seat on the uncomfortable arm of the throne. "Until we meet again, Abraham."

"Until we meet again, Hikari."

She steps away into the hall Tailmon had gone through. She does not run. She does not cry. Hikari is much too old to cry for herself.

Instead, she reaches the room with the white door, decorated in childish flowers and pastels peeking through the door frame.

Hikari pushes it open, her gaze meeting terrified robin's egg blue.

"My lady," she says to Yggdrasil. "It is time for us to go."

* * *

The Dark Area is unforgiving to those with a weak heart.

Not because it is inherently evil, or terrible. Hikari had been born here. That would mean she is inherently evil, that her brother is inherently evil. Both of those things are simply untrue. It is more complicated than that.

"_**You have returned."**_

Father's voice still booms through her very being, even when as a child he was just a human with human hands and height to her.

"I have," she says. Unlike then she does not quail. She smiles and meets his gaze. "I'm here to evacuate the children, as I promised."

"_**Hrm.**_" Dagomon rumbles, rolling into view and shifting his trident. "_**You have made many promises, false spawn, and you have kept them. I can allow this." **_

The air ripples noisily into a gaping maw in the sand.

She does not falter. "I am grateful you allow me passage, ocean king," she says simply and moves towards it.

"_**I am not finished."**_

She pauses.

He is silent for a long time. Too long. She had stayed with her husband too long. She does not want to lose her oldest son.

"_**Were we… better to you? Did we not fail you, as we did with her?"**_

Hikari is the one who is silent now.

Then, slowly, haltingly, she says, "Surely, you made mistakes. Scolded us unjustly, worried without kindness, were too nice in your weakness. But you loved us. Unceasingly, unhesitatingly, and treated us with the care you did not have to give. You were our parents. You were the best we could have wished for."

"_**... I see. Depart from these lands and return with your children. And…"**_ He waves his trident once more, leaving a single white light in the sea of grey and black. "_**Take her with you. Protect her and ensure her legacy has lived. For us."**_

Hikari holds the child to her as she forms, small and violet haired and like the little girl who had reckless dove into a world and wept for its strangers. "I thank you… Father. I love you. He loves you. We love you!"

"_**... If only we could muster the same."**_

Hikari doesn't answer. She simply leaps into the unknown, once more.

Tailmon is waiting for her. She must hurry.

* * *

The battle is not over. The children and their partners are still fighting, struggling around giant grey and white tentacles that miss them by hair after hair, judging by the screams. They are still struggling to live.

That is more than enough for her.

"I am the Holy Light," Hikari declares in her softest voice. "I am the beacon that marks the way for the lost hope. I am the gleam that declares the miracle as true. I am alive. As long as my light burns bright, a future will be made." Her body burns bright as she jumps from one place to the next and soon takes her place at her son's side.

"Mom!" Hiro's eyes go wide. "What are you doing here?"

"The fighting is over," she tells him and watches him pale. "You've done great, all of you."

"We can stop," asks the pink haired boy, who looks as exhausted as Hikari feels. He's carrying the little girl that she'd been warned about. She's sniffling and shaking, her throat practically in ribbons, still bleeding.

Her heart doesn't falter. "Yes. Get the rest and retreat."

Hiro gestures at the creature, horrified. "But dad-"

"Your father has chosen to seal himself away to rest." She looks towards where the digimon are fighting. The twins she had briefly met are dodging together with such ease. It's rather saddening now, even as the final girl runs from tentacles with her arms spread wide. "Once we go, we'll close off the final way for this monster to reach our world for now."

"For now?" her son repeats.

"For now," she agrees, passing him the child from Dagomon. Used to carrying small bodies he thankfully doesn't fall. "Now, order a retreat. I'll help them!"

"You can't touch them, mom," Hiro shouts after her as she jumps into the fray.

That's fine. She's messed things up by not touching them before.

It takes what feels like hours. One after the other, the children run up the path she had marked for them. Each second makes her lungs hurt. Each moment makes her body cry out in pain. Holydramon is probably bleeding fire by now. And the creature does not falter. It moves closer, its tentacles, reaching mindlessly for anything they can reach.

"Mom, come on!" Hiro shouts from the edge.

Hikari turns to follow and as she does, the monster _whispers_.

"_**You cannot escape forever."**_

Once, this would have broken her. Once this would have hurt her. But Hikari is an adult now, and she has things and people to live for.

"I haven't run away from a long time," she tells it, bunching her knees. "I'm just not stupid enough to run towards you anymore."

And she goes, towards the future again and full speed.

And at last, Hikari goes to home.

She is so very, very tired.

* * *

**_A/N:_** rare author's note. This is a _glimpse_ of the sheer nonsense that was Hikari's life in the Digital World. There is so much more. But alas, this is not the fic for that.


	15. Chapter 13

_Tags: Trauma, self-loathing, disability,_

* * *

_**Chapter Thirteen - Fuschia - 1995**_

Meiko did not expect any of her life.

She had not expected Meicoomon. She had not expected to lose Meicoomon. She had not expected to marry and fall and love and have kids with a Digimon. She had expected nothing and yet here she is now. Here she is with the digimon back in her life.

Coming for her family. She wants to throw up.

But she doesn't. Everyone is resting on the floor. So many people are sleeping. She had been sleeping too, until the child with green hair had started to twitch and shake, her body buzzing with something electrical. Horrible sounds came from her mouth for a solid minute. People almost woke until Meiko, the closest to her, reached out and touched the girl on the head. She went silent.

Then she starts to cry. Silent tears falling down her face from her flat red eyes that stared at nothing. She doesn't move, she doesn't speak, but she cries with her mouth open and eyes squirming and rolling about until she settles on Meiko herself. The eyes then close, as if seeing something much more terrifying.

Meiko feels bile threatening to escape her throat. She wants to move, but she's so stiff, it makes it hurt.

Why did everyone love a world that does this to children? She glances at Hikari, who has wrapped the four children around her like shawls.

Meiko does not understand. Her life is so strange, she isn't sure if she would change it. She isn't really sure what to do.

Has she really changed since that day when she tried to dive into death?

* * *

None of them are in any shape to talk until mid-afternoon.

By then the children are getting bored and Taichi insists, hoarsely, that he wants their kids to hear it from them. Everything. Meiko wants to disagree, thinking of her father, but she also can't disagree, because she's thinking of her father.

Taichi squeezes her hand and she squeezes his. Taesuke wrinkles his nose at the sight, but Tsukiko looks at them and doesn't look away.

Meiko's always admired that they've raised their daughter into that kind of person. The person who sits stoically, but firmly beside their friends, as she was doing for Kaito right now.

No one disagrees with Taichi, but Meiko is convinced it's because they're all tired and desperate and don't want to lie to their children.

"So," Taichi finally says. "What happened, Hikari?"

Hikari, who has her children wrapped around her still, meets his gaze evenly before she says -

"We underestimated the effects of the reboot. And overestimated our understanding of history." She exhales, then continues. "I went through and, as relatively expected, the Digital World was in chaos. There were pockets of civilization, but most of them were eating each other if they could. At least, until Luthandr. He was very stubbornly against that, so I teamed up with him and fought." She sighs. "But you don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about our families, our parents. About Izumi Osamu, right?"

Meiko watches Koushiro whip around to face them, turned from his computer. Ken sits up a little, but Osamu, who has been against his side the whole time, only blinks slowly at her.

Hikari smiles, slow and bitter and full of teeth. "I found them on a mission for a program called Kernel. He's a bastard, and I know it. I know he showed them to me to drive me insane. He failed. They are alive, suspended in tubes. Much like you all were." Her eyes flicker to Daisuke. "There were a host of empty tubes and even more full ones. Almost everyone's families were there. While I was there, I happened to pass by Ichijouji Osamu's tube."

Hikari exhales slowly. "He disappeared from there within a few hours. I wasn't sure what to think of it, so I spent a long while there on and off, figuring out how to freeze that function, because I thought he'd died. Instead…"

"He's here, alive, again." Ken finishes with a terrible nausea clear in his voice. They'd always gotten along in that quiet, devious sort of way, from how she heard it.

Hikari nods and looks at Meiko. Why, she has no idea. "Your parents are human, therefore they are capable of being pulled into the cycle of souls. It's a complicated program, made by the previous homeostasis that somehow survived the reboot as a critical function, I think. That's the only explanation I can think of for it."

The blond woman at her side shudders and doesn't stir and Meiko's eyes are drawn to her again anyway. There's a sickening familiarity to her face, a feeling they've always known each other.

"So are you saying Digimon aren't?" Koushiro asks, the surprise fading to curiosity.

Hikari shakes her head. "Digimon have their own cycle of souls. It's more like data recycling. Humans have a "distinct data" which requires them to have a separate cycle. Those in the middle will likely fall in the humans' cycle. But anyway, everyone else in your families are in those tubes. I can't guarantee their condition now, especially not with what happened, but the place they're located in is definitely safe. I thought… I'd rather it'd have been your choice to decide what you wanted to be done with them."

No one can answer that. Meiko tries to think of her parents, of the father who didn't know how to love her, and the mother who let him get away with it. What will they think of her now, a mother of her own children, who had struggled to be born?

The thought of it… makes her spine tingle with fear. And she hates it.

"What happened to our partners?" Daisuke asks and Meiko, through a haze, watches Takeru abruptly shut his mouth. "Like, V-mon sounds Scottish."

The war required data integration," Kyoko supplies, her hands resting on a small, lavender bundle. "Because you weren't with us, we had to evolve differently, and that usually means absorbing and recycling data. Most everyone stayed behind to patrol and put things back together. They were smart about this."

"Even Mei-chan," Meiko hears herself ask before she can quite control herself.

Hikari manages to smile. "Hers was a little complicated, but yes, we managed to save Meicoomon."

She doesn't mean to break down, but she does. Like a wall has shattered over her heart and left it coated in dust. She is engulfed in feelings that threaten to burst out of her chest.

Eventually she calms down enough to breathe and finds Taesuke latched to her chest, staring at her in terror.

"I'm all right," she sniffles, cradling him close. "I'm all right. Don't worry, Tae, I'm relieved. That's all."

"Nuh-uh," he says, but doesn't elaborate, just hides his face in her neck.

She puffs out a laugh. "Well, stay beside me in case then."

He does, though in retrospect, Meiko will wish she had sent him away.

"I'll be returning there as soon as I'm sure Hikari will be all right," Tailmon says suddenly. Meiko blinks and her eyes travel towards Hikari. She doesn't look surprised. "These two will be staying here in the interim. Until the Chosen are selected again."

"It's safer," Hikari says. "Somewhat anyway. And I can help you from this side better than I can while the digital world repairs itself."

Taichi squeezes her shoulder gently. Meiko winces despite herself. Help. How is she herself going to be of any help?

After all, she has no skills, other than a teaching degree for disadvantaged children, when they were perfectly good schools in the area. What could she do with that?

* * *

That little girl with the bleeding throat, her mother returns to the university. Meiko doesn't know what time it is, but the girl and her father are nowhere to be found, and the boy is staring with one eye at her in a way Meiko has seen on angrier children, but it's rather terrifying from someone the age of her son. The woman is carrying him like he weighs air, but in fairness, she'd done the same once by accident and regretted it hours later. The woman is shorter than her, stockier in a way that probably carried sacks of bricks over both shoulders and ran with them.

She is small and stocky and olive-skinned, her facial features sharp. They soften when she opens her mouth to speak. "Good afternoon." Her accent is carefully spoken out, but Meiko, who has spoken like she was born in Tokyo for decades of her life now, can hear it. Something in her warms, hopes, desperate in a way it hasn't been since she was fifteen and in a new city unlike her own. "I apologize for us all not being here. Sayo is in the hospital after her… ordeal. My husband is with her."

"No, I…" Meiko shakes her head, catches Taichi's eye. He jogs over to them like he's running on a normal night and not fumes. "Considering it was the actions of the world our families have grown to love, it's kind of our responsibility for her injuries in the first place. We couldn't stop her from going through into that world and paying for it."

The woman cracks a smile at her. "There are very few people who can get my daughter to stop doing anything once she sets her mind to the whole thing, as Dougal's learning. Aren't you?"

The boy grumbles, face buried in her neck.

"Besides," the woman continues, just as Taichi reaches them. "It's hardly _your_ world, anyway. I was born there with my little brother."

Taichi almost drops his jaw to the floor. "Really?" He sounds breathless with joy, companionship close at hand. Meiko pretends it doesn't hurt a little.

The woman shrugs. "Aye. We were there when we were younger. Much younger. We left."

"There were others." Hikari limps up to them. The limp is new, fresh based on a bandaged wound. "They were few and far between but they looked human enough."

"That isn't my concern." The woman sounds tired. "Was my daughter a savior?"

The three of them look at each other and Hikari admits for them. "We have no idea. She might become one. But I didn't see a partner for her anywhere."

"Hmpf." The woman sighs. "Indeed. Well, I just came to thank you all for helping her and not forgetting her. I'll let you begin your battle plans. For now we'll stay out of it."

Taichi grimaces. Meiko watches his face, the way his eyes dart to the bundles of people and children that were not rushed to the nearest hospital. "Well, we can't force you to help, but any knowledge you have would be great."

The woman rolls her shoulders. "I doubt it is up to date, so it is likely useless. And that is not good to prepare for the inevitable. My husband will leave you our number when he returns to check on your injured. Until then." She turns to leave and the young boy's eyes meet Meiko's. Not with fear, but with a stubborn, steady mistrust.

It's the look in his eyes, the utter surety that no one will help, they will be nothing and no one and left behind for the aftermath, that galvanizes Meiko and lights a fire in her gut.

"Please wait a moment." She draws up all her courage as the woman turns back to her, both lavender eyebrows high on her head. "My name is Yagami Meiko. I am a certified teacher for Japanese Sign Language. If I may, I would like to request to teach said language to your daughter, so she doesn't have to rely on whiteboards and such."

The woman turns to look at her fully. "That would be a bother to you."

"I insist," Meiko says softly. "She's involved and I would like to help where I can."

"I don't wish to take up too much of your time," the woman tells her, but her eyes say something else.

Meiko presses. "It would be no trouble."

"I see…" the woman smiles again, a softer little thing. "Then if you would not mind…"

"It'd be no trouble," Meiko repeats, smiling back.

The woman's eyes sparkle with something stronger than sunlight. "My name is Tsukino Yuma, I believe you and I will be seeing a lot of each other."

She doesn't bow and Meiko, in a horrible breach of propriety, doesn't either. "I'm looking forward to it," she says and through the bubble of hope in her chest, she finds that she means it.

This is something she can do. This is a way she can make up, even a little, for the mistakes she made. She'll take it.


	16. Epilogue

Epilogue - Rainbow - 1999

In 2005, a world ended once.

No one remembers it but the survivors, who were warped into a world beyond their understanding, the world of their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, and without words, told to live.

And so, they did and do and will.

* * *

Yagami Taichi spends every morning with a coffee and his wife and husband, occasionally some toast and some side dishes. For the past three years, certain rice has started giving him indigestion. He worries it's due to too much ramen.

He always gives his children a hug, all four of them. Sometimes all at once. He pouts until Tsukiko gives into him. He kisses his spouses on the forehead with the curtains open.

He's still a daredevil.

* * *

Ishida Yamato comes down to Earth one day and it takes him three months to readjust. But he has to adjust, and quickly, in order to defeat Matsumi in the daily races on the floor. He has to, in order to let Kasumi use him as a desk and a model. He has the best face for it.

He tosses frisbees to their giant dog that could kill him and thinks of how Gabumon would fight for the little plastic toy with teeth and claws and teary laughter while the twins settle for wrestling in the rain and throwing snow at him and always getting his back.

Settling may be impossible with his restless legs and wandering spirits, but Yamato chooses, and that's close enough, really.

* * *

Takenouchi Sora sews meticulous patches and cradles her family in her too small lap and sometimes wishes Piyomon was there with her giant wings and gentle encouragement. She thinks about their parents more than anyone, thinks of pride and joy and love and teaches little boys how to plant seeds and snip flowers and their parents how to let them appreciate the warmth of them in the face of too much heat and rain and snow.

She counts down the days with her heart in her throat every night. Sometimes Yamato sits up with her. Sometimes she's alone. Sometimes her kids come and take her hands and guide her to the couch. She hurts during those moments.

But she loves harder. It is, really, all she can do.

* * *

Tachikawa Mimi is full of noise.

Her home is noisy even when there's less of them, when there's less everything in their too small apartment. People rushing for bags, it being super late at night, bumrushing fast food down their own faces (she'll yell at them for this later because at least they're splitting the sandwich but it's still bad for them), making sure they all have everything on the train and on the way down they're all belting whatever's playing over the shops nearby barring Kaito because he loves them and doesn't need to. Hopping stairs three at a time, Mimi brushes a leaf out of Aiden's hair and he squirms as if to complain, but doesn't.

Soon they'll be taking up a chunk of an airplane and Mimi will be going home (first home, other home, not home?) again.

Kaito takes her hand even though he's thirteen now and a big kid and squeezes it because some part of him is still that little one ripped from her arms into their glitching computer and he is probably very scared.

Palmon wouldn't know what to do here, which is a comfort. She would guess what to say, and it'd probably be exactly what Mimi's thinking of right now.

Mimi is noisy about many things, but she is very silently proud of her son. He doesn't need anything grandiose for her to mean it, either.

* * *

Koushiro doesn't know enough.

It's 1999 and they're not ready. It's almost August and the children have only varied, limited skills. The Digital World has done nothing in these past few years. Nothing has changed and he…

He's grown too old to reach it.

He thinks that's the case anyway. Would it have been the same if they had saved their world? Their timeline?

Taichi says there's no point in wondering about things that they'll never know, about things they'll never see or hear or feel. But if they had done that, they wouldn't have been to the digital world, right?

Koushiro is buried under all the love he could ever ask for, all the things that he's learned that he doesn't need to be happy, but he wants them and he wants the knowledge that could protect them.

And one day it will all appear at his fingertips.

But at what cost?

* * *

Jou comes home at seven on a Tuesday morning in time to be hugged gleefully by two children. His clothes are drenched from the current storm, and one hug is a bit rougher than the other. But they are happy to see him alive and he is happy to see them alive.

Leomon's death. Patamon's death. So many deaths. All of them tap dance on his skull in his dreams on even the good nights. But he still gets home and sleeps during the day, has lunch with coworkers, talks about his kids.

Mei is always up to greet him, stubbornly working despite the world that demands she not dare.

"I'm counting on you," she always tells him when she leaves with the kids.

It warms his heart, and she knows why. She always knows why.

That's why she says it, and that's a reason he likes to hear it.

* * *

Between Daisuke and Daiki, the ramen cart is always ready before the kid starts class.

He's the toughest one, the smartest (in his opinion, Daisuke knows better), and the best taste tester (this one is actually true). Without V-mon, it's a bit harder to pull, but Fafnir always magically shows up with his thick arms and blue hair and occasionally, the toddler.

Who loves Daisuke. Which fair, everyone loves Daisuke.

"Lookin' all set," Fafnir tells him, all fondness and soft eyes and stories to tell.

Daisuke doesn't need him to tell the stories, but he likes hearing it while the kids are sleeping and Miyako's working and Ken's coming home late, just listening to his partner tell him about the bigger wider world beyond him.

Reminding him that it's still wonderful.

"Of course," he says. "We're competing with Maruchan now."

His partner, the bastard, freaking laughs. "You've got miracles out your butt."

"You bet."

* * *

Miyako, and not for the first time, wishes she could homeschool her kids.

They're strong and independent and close to each other, but it's not the same as preparing them for the future.

For the digimon.

But really, what can?

What can prepare them for the fighting, the death, the loss? The pain? She'd rather they not go at all. She'd rather go again a hundred times over even if...

Even if only to see Hawkmon again.

So she starts teaching them how to tie ropes, to run fast, to hold hands and never let go.

Ken? Ken teaches them to hold their hearts close, and keep their enemies closer. They never know who could hurt them. But it can never be each other.

* * *

Iori is proud.

Kaya sits in his lap, sucks her thumb. Mio swipes down with her shinai. This time, it stays in her hands.

He has made mistakes. He knows this. He has been wrong. He knows this. But if this is the result, with choices on the way, and things yet to come, Iori does not regret. He cannot regret.

He can only keep walking on his own feet.

He wonders if his father would be proud of him.

He thinks so.

* * *

Ken rather likes Mr. Kurumi.

Well, yes he's Wormmon - Kyoko's father - now, somehow, he doesn't know how, but he and Matayoshi are clever and fierce and fun and they make decent coffee.

... They just can't let Wormmon make it. Ever.

They'd made that mistake before.

Plus they listen. They're already tracking blips of digital life, transitions from one world to the next, flickers of broken technology. Power outages, everything. They track it all.

Kyoko watches with evident curiosity, legs often crossed, eyes thoughtful. And sometimes she'll grin at Ken in a way that makes him think of long studying hours and poor cafeteria choices.

And his brother, who stops by after school most days, even though they're not brothers anymore. His excuse is that he likes to know what's going on, but Ken knows. Ken knows well.

He can give his brother the little kindnesses. They've missed out on quite a few of them.

* * *

It's in the summer of 1999 that Takeru gets custody of his girlfriend's kids.

It's bittersweet, really. The girls only know him through Hirose and shared lunches and moments of hellos. But when she trumped up fake charge after fake charge (and thank gods for Iori who knows when it's a fake thing and can help him and does help him, thank everyone else stopping him from doing anything that could screw him over and convincing him to never do those things again) on him and expected him to fall and pay up, he had to do something. He couldn't lose Hirose. Not again.

Kotone is receptive, at least. She's sometimes energetic, sometimes lethargic. Kaoru is indifferent, but then she might be lucky to be alive.

Takeru doesn't know if he'll be able to do much for them. None of them know if they'll be able to do much for anyone. But he wants to try at least, to be more, to be better than what had been for him.

He wants to say sorry to his parents.

That'll be the hardest part but he has some hope, buried somewhere in his trachea.

* * *

Hikari sleeps with the radio on.

She'd prefer the TV but it's too bright, too flashy, and scares Hiro when it makes noise at three am.

Her youngest three only have blurry memories of war and violence, blurrier memories of their father. They train every day because they want to, not because they have to. Hiro goes to school dutifully, even though she knows he'd rather not. She takes them to whatever they need, whenever she can.

Having a rich brother has its perks.

But it's not going to last forever.

But for now, as the light peeks in through the curtains, Hikari gets up with it and goes to prepare breakfast.

She is not the Child of Light anymore. But she is still somebody's light, and that fact will never change.

* * *

Meiko comes to a decision on a Tuesday morning. It's not a very exciting decision, but she comes to it nonetheless.

"I'm going to look at the data on the Cradle," she says. The others look at her, their children like she's about to reveal another giant family secret. "We've now met more than a few families with Digimon ancestry. No one else thought to open the gate and return their digimon. We exist without our parents and are enrolled, registered, everything. There's no way a simple reboot would cause that."

It was a thought they'd all had but only spoken when too drunk to see straight. Was this planned? Was this a desire of someone else? Who had been using them?

Hikari hadn't told them everything. Mostly, she had admitted, because there was a lot that she didn't know and too much was conjecture for her to comfortably admit in a room of easily impressed children.

Meiko could respect that, but...

What if it's related to Meicoomon? What if it's about Hime-chan? She can't leave it hanging.

Koushiro is more than grateful to think about one less thing. Taichi is now twice as worried.

The children? They're acting strangely.

Meiko will keep an eye on that too. They don't suspect that Sayo will help. But Meiko is smarter than she thought she would be.

She will make this right.

* * *

The Chosen Children live their lives no longer chosen, in a world that has forgotten their destiny. They continue their days with the people they love, with the children they love, with each other in hand. The digital world continues to turn and heal, heal and turn.

On August 1st, 1999, something ripples in and out of the sky. A group of children get a strange email. And a door opens once more, in front of a scarred girl with purple hair.

Tsukino Sayo's adventure, like many others, did not end in 1995. It has only just begun.

* * *

_**A/N:**_ From start to finish, this to me was a story of endings and beginnings for me, for the Chosen Children. There's a lot to unpack in this story. Someone said that you really only tell twenty percent of the story. I'm pretty sure I hit that point when I initially started it. It was always meant to lead to the next generation, to some other kids. There are other kids to talk about yeah, other stories of these people, but to me this story was always, always about moving forward, trials and tribulations be damned. I hope, in some way, that I've said enough about that to all of you. Thank you for keeping up with me and this work, and tune into the sequel when it arrives.


End file.
